The series of Tuesday early evening concerts which innovative promoter Christine Allen puts on at St Cyprian’s Church is one of the joys of the London scene. It is an enterprising mixture of established and rising talent. Not many promoters can deliver the combination of consistent quality, imagination and originality which Christine does. Even with a grillion times her resources.

St. Cyprian’s is a great and easy-to-get-to venue. It’s two minutes walk from Baker Street station. A cavernous church with a great acoustic. Here’s Alyn Shipton writing about St. Cyps in The Times: “The church has become the setting for a series of adventurous jazz concerts ……most of the time, the sheer beauty of its sound seduced us too, shimmering round the ornate Anglo-Catholic interior of St Cyprian’s, as Yoshiki Ban’s ornate candles guttered and flickered”

The current season has several interesting gigs. The next one up on Feb 24th is a solo multi-instrumental concert by one of the most complete musicians, but freest spirits in the British music profession, Daryl Runswick.

Daryl Runswick’s jaw-dropping biography is HERE, part of a website which gives a window into an extraordinary career. Runswick has a unique place in the musical fabric of this country.

Base camp was as a Cambridge University choral scholar. Establishment central. Your trusty reliable springboard into a career in the musical establishment……..if you want to get catapulted/ pigeon-holed as, say, a conductor, or a singer, or a composer. You’re right in there. the doors open easily.

But if the doors you want to open are not those, but as Dankworth’s bass player? Or as Sinatra’s/ Basie’s/ Ornette Coleman’s bass player? Or as part of an experimental vocal group working extensively with John Cage and Berio… as author of tutor books on piano improvisation?

Well, you have to prove that you can, or find easier ways to live. And Daryl Runswick has proved brilliantly that he indeed can. This gig will be an amalgam of this unique experience of performing at the highest level. Everywhere.

At this gig you will hear

-both the fretless alto bass and the fretted, guitar-stringed piccolo bass

-classical singing, scat singing, extended-vocal-technique singing

-pop songs, jazz tunes, forms influenced by contemporary classical

– a laptop with which he “spins in” backings and electronic treatments.

February 24th St Cyp’s. 6.30 start time. Straight into the recommended list. Thank you Christine!