From a music collection point of view, 2012 continued pretty much as before with my interest mainly being split between Gypsy/Jazz and Classical music. Adrien Moignard was at the forefront of the Gypsy/Jazz releases, with another CD of his own, and also a collaboration with Rocky Gresset. In the meantime, Bireli Lagrene was diversifying away from pure gypsy/jazz, and showing his much broader palette once again with; ‘Mouvements‘. There was also fascinating orchestral crossover project called Symphonic Django, featuring Stochelo Rosenberg; released on CD and DVD.
In the Classical department, the huge amount of available material saw me continuing to focus on Wagner, Bruckner, Beethoven, and Mahler, but also exploring more Debussy, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, and Sibelius.
On the band front in 2012, Swingologie made a demo CD to showcase the band’s talents towards getting further gigs, and continued to build a solid reputation, both as a trio and a quartet.
Most importantly; big things were happening for me in my personal life. It took a long time for me to meet the right person to be my life partner, and in 2012 it happened completely unexpectedly. Jane and I have been together for ten years this year, and married for eight; and in that first year I was already inspired enough to compose a tune for her, which I entitled ‘Romantique‘.
After arriving in Nottingham from Melbourne, Australia, Jane came along to her first jazz gig at the Hand and Heart. and so was introduced to Gypsy/Jazz and my world as a musician.
Wayne's random blog 