All that jazz... from the West Coast

With the next edition of the Malta Jazz Festival pencilled for July 15-17, jazz lovers might like to know that the Maltese quartet called Tune Up has just launched an album named YouNote featuring West Coast Jazz.

When asked what this type of jazz sounds like, band member Mario Cocker Aquilina, who plays double bass, said this genre of music was more pleasant to the ear. "A substantial number of people steer clear of listening to jazz because they possibly find the music heavy and somewhat hard to understand. West Coast Jazz is far more melodious and has a nice, relaxing rhythm," Mr Aquilina said.

The album has just been released and features such numbers as the melanchonic It Never Entered My Mind by Rodgers/Hart and the livelier number Lester Left Town by Wayne Shorter. Mr Aquilina has played at the Bratislava Jazz Festival in 1985, the Malta Jazz Festival in 2003 and the Paradise Jazz Festival in Cyprus in 2005.

The other members of the quartet who, incidentally, have all played in earlier editions of the Malta Jazz Festival are Roger Azzopardi, on flugelhorn, Gregory Camilleri, on piano, and Noel Grech, on drums.

It was Mr Azzopardi who came up with the idea of getting the quartet together when he was playing at Malata Restaurant at St George's Square, Valletta, with various bands. That's where the band Tune Up plays every Thursday. The album was recorded at Tone Studios in Birkirkara and was engineered by Andrew Zammit.