Tim and I went to visit legendary UK jazz drummer Tony Levin at his home in Church Stretton today. We’re keen to work with him on an online jazz project, and this was an initial conversation to get the ball rolling.

Tony runs a semi-regular jazz club at the Patrick Kavanagh pub in Moseley, where some of the greatest jazz players in the world play to a handful of people in the know. He also has a record label called Rare Music, which releases some great undiscovered British jazz gems.

We’re interested in working with Tony to start building a bit of an online oral history about local jazz that we hope will eventually seed a UK Jazz Digital Archive. We’ll bring students into the plan, film some performances (Dave Holland’s giving a masterclass at the Conservatoire this week — that’s our university), and get Tony talking to some of his jazz mates to reminisce about the old days.

And then we’ll do some cool social networking, cross-platform, Web2.5 stuff with it.

We also admired some of his wife Chris’s sculpture. She’s actually a musician - a bass player - but she dabbles in sculpture. Here’s some of her work. Impressive stuff:

Tim and Tony

Tim was particularly pleased to meet Tony. He’d been a long-time fan of his music, and considers him one of the true greats in the jazz world. To be honest, I don’t know enough about UK jazz to be able to place anyone other than maybe Ian Carr, Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes in the pantheon of British legends, but I have heard Tony play and he’s pretty amazing.

Should be a good project. I’m also quite pleased with the new camera. Still learning the ropes, but I’m impressed with the Leica.