The extensive gigging that accompanied the above mentioned releases is noteworthy in itself, in that music of this kind was getting to large audiences fairly easily. This, it has to be said, had a lot to do with the excitement surrounding British Jazz at the time…a time when artists here were starting to be appreciated for their own sounds and approaches, and being compared less to their American counterparts. The musical climate in London at least was, in this sense, absolutely opportune for someone like Amancio, with his own very unique blend…or integration…of literally where he’d come from and where he was headed (i.e. East to West).

This interest in hearing something new, the eagerness of jazz and non-jazz listeners at the time, coupled with a fair effort on the part of the record companies’ promotional people, made possible concerts like the “Jazz Explosion” at the Mermaid Theatre in Manchester Square…this one featuring the whole Lansdowne gang, as it were: Amancio, Joe, Don Rendell, Ian Carr, Guy Warren and the world renowned pianist & composer Stan Tracy. In fact that concert was promotion for the EMI album of the same name (see discography), intended as an introductory compilation…introducing the artists’ own latest releases. But this was truly a golden age in Jazz here in the U.K. From Joe Harriot’s free-form to Keith Tippet’s fairly Avant Garde works, to Mike Gibbs much renowned compositions and orchestrations to the Rendell-Carr Quintet who had been brewing up quite a storm in clubs for several years by now, and of course pianist/composer Michael Garrick with his much acclaimed Poetry and Jazz concerts (and album) amongst other ventures, Jazz in the U.K., centered around London of course, was undergoing a bit of a mini renaissance.



At the same time, none of the above is to say that times were easy for these musicians. Some still worked full time day jobs and played the clubs by night, and they had to contend with, where top gigs were concerned, the constant stream of big name visiting American artists that tended to be booked into clubs like Ronnie Scotts. Slowly, however, people began to notice the talent on their own doorstep, so to speak, and the British Jazzmen (and women…because there were by now a few) began to find wider audiences, followings even, and to get the more serious bookings. At the same time, it’s probably only in the broadest sense of the term that someone like Amancio can even be categorized as a British Jazzman. If folk music had still been the mainstay on the London scene when Amancio arrived, he’d likely have found his collaborators in the folk clubs. He was never a genre snob.

It’s the very energy – the fusions, the crossovers, the daring - of the period described above that Giles Peterson has so successfully captured on the aforementioned “Impressed” album, which also features cuts from bass player Graham Collier, trumpeter Harry Becket and Sax giant Tubby Hayes (though here on Vibes, his other specialty), alongside Amancio, Joe and others mentioned above.

A much more in depth (and likely more accurate) account of this period in British jazz can be found in Ian Carr’s  book  Music Outside.

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BIOGRAPHY - A note on the jazz scene at the time