Recently by Paul Loraine

As far as I can tell, Brad Mehldau wears the same shirt in every photo shoot.

Brown and two-tone - that most hideous of fashion mistakes made consistently by forty-something men who have a 'Friday night shirt' - the thing is frankly nauseating.

I read a quote from Amy Winehouse a while back that made me ask a few questions.

Thorny, potentially life transforming questions. Well, for the purposes of this blog anyway.

The line-up for next year's Gateshead International Jazz festival landed in my inbox the other day.

It's not happening for a while yet, I know, but we don't get that much good jazz up here so we have to anticipate these things more eagerly than they do down south.

Crunchy chord maestro and jazz grandad Herbie Hancock is back in Gateshead in a couple of weeks time and I'm gearing up for a bit of keytar action.

My grave fear is that the strap-on piano, and the possibility of an unbridled funkathon its presence teases you with, might not materialise.

I have a confession to make. I'm 24 and I listen to jazz. I'm continually told it's an embarrassing deformity of musical taste, that jazz fans are the hairy-backed males of the music community - everyone else pretends it's ok but really it's not.

My passion was greeted with predictable amusement in The Journal office.