My Friend Lester

My wonderful wife got all creative when we got back from our honeymoon and wrote an amazing play about the music and relationship between Billie Holiday and Lester Young. She’s Billie and I’m going to play Lester! It’s probably the first time the world sees a Swedish, bearded Lester Young. It has been so interesting doing the research for this. I have dived deep into his music and I feel like it has made my own jazz playing better. What a great man!

The show has so far only one performance, 3 August at the Jive Monkey in Brighton. Get your tickets here!

Björn Dahlberg Quartet at the Brighton Blue Note

I’m super excited! Tonight I will be playing all my saxophones and clarinets at the Brighton Blue Note together with Paul Richards – Guitar, Jim Whyte – drums and Terry Pack – bass. Since I moved to the UK I haven’t really found an outlet for this material. The jazz I play have mostly been swing with the Magic Numbers and others and standards at the jam sessions. I love doing that and it’s been great exploring the earlier styles but to be able to play some of my own favourite compositions will be something extra. We will play several tunes from my old project Boogaloo B – A Technicolor soundtrack of twist and New Orleans funk and more. It’s 11pm-1am (jazz hours!)  underneath the Greenhouse effect, 63 Church Rd, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2BD.

Read more about it at Paul Richard’s site You can hear some of the music at my old MySpace site