I love music – the same music everyone else loves.  Jazz music, not so much.

But I recently watched a free concert by the Royal Academy of Music Big Jazz Band at the South Bank Centre in London. This turned out to be the most exciting music performance I’ve ever seen.

I ran off to buy some recorded jazz music. It was fragmented, complicated, impossible to follow.

Would you carry on wasting time listening to music you don’t get?  Or would you drop it, and risk missing out on a whole world of intrigue?  Was that Royal Academy performance some kind of freak moment, never to be repeated?  JazzJanuary will answer the big question: can jazz music work on normal people?

Story and photos: Matt Pannell