Two pieces of news in from Roger Farbey MBE who was a close friend of the late Ian Carr. Roger runs the Ian Carr website.

– A new 180 gram vinyl release by the Michael Garrick Sextet from the Gearbox Records stable is scheduled for release on 5 August. Entitled ‘Prelude to a Heart is a Lotus’ it features Ian Carr and Don Rendell with six tracks recorded in stereo for a BBC radio broadcast in 1968. The catalogue number is GB1517.

– With the 80th anniversary of Ian Carr’s birthday celebrated in April this year, a brand new website has been launched in his honour to replace the previous one (which was launched in November 2002).

Note: Ian Carr, who passed away on 25 February 2009 aged 75, has long been regarded as one of the most important figures in British jazz. He was an award-winning trumpeter with both the Rendell/Carr Quintet and his own fusion band Nucleus, which won the Montreux jazz festival in 1970. An influential teacher  (his students included Julian Joseph and Cleveland Watkiss ), Ian Carr wrote a definitive biography of  Miles Davis and also one of Keith Jarrett. He was a co-editor of the Rough Guide to Jazz and also wrote a major work on contemporary British jazz ‘Music Outside’ published in 1973 and subsequently re-published by Northway Books. Ian’s biography, written with his full co-operation before he fell ill with Alzheimer’s, is Out of the Long Dark, by Alyn Shipton (Equinox, 2006, available).

Address for the new Ian Carr Website: http://iancarrsnucleus.webs.com/