The glass-blower

What did the glass blower say to the jazz musician?

To be a legitimate jazz player, you need to `pay your dues', just like in any craft; yet as a way of putting things together, jazz celebrates breaking rules. The syncopation essential to jazz entails doing the unexpected. Of all the crafts, it is hot glass which has most in common with jazz. They both present forms of individual lyricism that stand forward to the rhythm cooked up by a loyal team.

Neil Roberts visited opportunity shops seeking moulded glass items like eyewashes, jelly moulds, ashtrays and drink glasses.

Neil Roberts (Cryonic Quartet) then assembled these items in columns which he placed on stools. This pieces express the cool spontaneity of jazz in making elegant combinations with most ordinary of glass objects. Like Miles Davis.

Maureen Williams (Octavv) touches something a little hotter in her version of the energy and excess of jazz in colour.