Campaigning to put a blue plaque on a wall to commemorate a great cultural hero is a fine hobby and it’s great that musicians such as Sidney Bechet are remembered and revered.
But obsessing about the past in a homes and gardens kind of way misses the point though when jazz today could do with practical support grounded in performance and captured on a recording. Christof Lauer and the NDR Big Band’s tribute to Bechet released earlier this year for example is a much more coherent way of paying tribute to a jazz great than erecting even dozens of however tasteful ceramic tiles could ever achieve. It’s the musical present, surely – the tradition in transition if you must even if this focus garners fewer headlines – that needs attention, rather than a fixation with the past. Stephen Graham