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Wed 20 and Thur 21 April 2005 : Jonathan Cairney with the Andy Williamson Buzztet at Pizza on the Park, Hyde Park Corner, London

Ross Stanley - piano
Julian Jackson - double bass
Simon Pearson - drums

A few extracts from songs as MP3 files recorded by this group:
Autumn in New York
The Girl I Love
What is This Thing Called Love?
You Make Me Feel So Young

Pizza On The Park, 11-13 Knightsbridge, London, SW1X 7LY map. Doors open 7.30pm. on stage between 9pm and 11.30pm. Tickets £12 in advance, £14 on the door. Reservations: 020 7235 5273 Mon to Fri between 10am and 6pm www.pizzaonthepark.co.uk

It's best to book a table in advance at Pizza on the Park. The Music Room is downstairs, through a door in the main restaurant. The menu is very similar in content and price to that found in any Pizza Express, although this is no longer part of that chain. There are a small number of stools by the bar, if you don't want to eat.

Jonathan Cairney (right) is a curious character. He grew up with his four sisters in the small town of Dunfermline, north of Edinburgh in Scotland, the son of actor George Cairney. He went to Cambridge University to study history, then disappeared.

He resurfaced in 1998 when he won the Perrier Male Vocalist prize in the young jazz awards. [Andy Williamson writes] "I first met him when the Big Buzzard band was performing that year at the Soho Ball. The organizer introduced him to me, and asked whether we might agree to back him on a couple numbers. There was no time for a rehearsal, but we were game for the challenge, and he seemed like an amenable chap, so we went for it. He produced a set of parts for Feet do Your Stuff, which just happened to be for exactly the right instrumentation. The Buzzard musicians are great sight readers, so they took it in their stride and the result was wonderful. We also had an arrangement in our pad for the old ballad Body and Soul that we'd performed previously with Stacey Kent. Jonathan had a quick look through the chart in the dressing room with arranger Ned Bennet, who pointed out a few corners that might catch him out. Slow numbers are particularly hard to get right first time, but Jonathan was fantastic, performing our arrangement flawlessly as if he'd been doing it for years. That night we asked him if he'd like a regular gig, and he's been with the band ever since.

"Jonathan keeps revealing new sides to his multifaceted personality. He sat down with Ned one afternoon to play through some of his own compositions. Ned took the rough outlines that he heard that day, and turned them into some of the most popular things in the Buzzards' repertoire. Jonathan writes equally well in modern funk and soul styles, as well as tunes that could come straight from the classic American song book genre of the 40s and 50s swing era. Then one year at the Edinburgh Fringe during a vacant spot in the Spiegeltent's schedule, Jonathan took to the stage with guitar and performed a set of his own outstanding solo songs that contain bits of Elvis Costello and Paul Simon, but undeniably have the Cairney stamp of beautiful, profound and touching melodies and lyrics."

Conceived in Nigeria to a Scottish father and a Californian mother, Andy Williamson (left) was born in Glasgow in 1967 and grew up in the North East of England. He has spent most of his adult life simultaneously engrossed in music, and fighting off its pull to earn a decent living designing multimedia and interactive stuff on computers. Recently music has begun to have the upper hand in this tug of war. As a child and student, he played viola in symphony orchestras, sax with the National Youth Wind Orchestra and sang in the National Youth Choir, and conducted The Oxford Chamber Choir.

Playing the sax was a childhood dream, sparked off by the theme music to the Pink Panther cartoons on Saturday evening TV in the 70s. At the age of 16, the proceeds of a paper round allowed hin to buy his first Tenor Sax (he now plays a Conn tenor built in 1930). Before long he found a place in the Durham Youth Jazz Orchestra with whom he made his first broadcast on Radio 2 when the band won the BBC National Youth Big Band competition. When he got a place at Oxford University to study physics, it quickly became clear that playing sax or singing in and conducting orchestras and choirs was going to occupy most of his time. As president of Merton College music society, he began promoting concerts in Merton Chapel and the Holywell Music Room - two of the most beautiful music venues in the world.

In 1988, Andy became a founder member of the Oxford-based crazy jive band, the Honkin' Hep Cats. These guys took mucking about on stage to new heights, and became notorious performers at the Edinburgh Fringe and at London's South Bank Centre until their bodies could take it no longer and disbanded in 1997. Musically the band follwed in the footsteps of the likes of Louis Jordan, Louis Prima, Bullmoose Jackson, Slim Gaillard, Dizzy Gillespie and Wynonie Harris. Andy particularly showed the influence of larger than life performers like Big Jay McNeely and Lionel Hampton in the development of a style where ridiculous crowd-pleasing antics were always just around the corner. These took their toll, and a couple incidents have left Andy's face with smalll permanent scars, where the sax came out on top. While conducting the Oxford Chamber Choir, Andy first started bringing jazz and choral music together; the Hep Cats, plus singer Stacey Kent joined the choir to perform a memorable one-off concert of Andy's arrangements for this apparently bizarre combination.

Andy is now best known as the leader of the 12-piece Big Buzzard Boogie Band, appearing this year at the Brighton Festival in the Famous Spiegeltent, and at the same venue at the Edinburgh Fringe. The Buzzards performed at The Prom at Buckingham Palace as part of the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002, and are heard regularly on BBC Radio, most recently in a live broadcast on Radio 4 of Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert from Trafalgar Square, London, continuing the choral connection. They regularly appear at the South Bank Centre in London, where they regularly attract record audiences for such concerts.

As leader of his own small group, Andy has appeared at the 100 Club in London, in the Famous Spiegeltent at the Brighton Festival and for the late night sessions at the Shetland Folk Festival 2004. In 2002, he sold his house in Bristol, and embarked on an extended period of travelling. So far this has taken him to France, Corsica, Cuba, Zanzibar, Mozambique, Chicago, New York, Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In all of these places he played with local musicans in jazz and blues clubs and impromptu gatherings. Some of the stories, pictures and recordings from this ongoing trip can be found at his website Sax on the Road.