The Manchester scene is a pretty loose term. Take Adam Fairhall who is very much part of it even if he lives 40 miles from the city: he even hails from much further afield, Cornwall. Jazz is not defined by location any longer as Stuart Nicholson first pointed out in his influential book Is Jazz Dead (Or Has It Moved To  A New Address?) and dawned on everyone else despite protests from those with strong home town allegiances. Fairhall could have been part of the Leeds scene as he studied there but Leeds in jazz is different (it’s more punk jazz, no wave, and death-metal referencing) and I’m not making a glib comparison I hope. Leeds spawned Matthew Bourne, trioVD, Roller Trio, and now the intriguing Shatner’s Bassoon. Manchester has Stuart McCallum, Beats & Pieces at the cutting edge 12 Points new band Euro jazz fest in Dublin last week… and Adam Fairhall. Somehow he doesn’t fit in, composers of his distinctiveness and ideas rarely do. Think Django Bates: he’s not part of any place scene is he? Although you can note a geographical location for shorthand he’s usually referred to in terms of Loose Tubes or “his generation", but when you hear Django’s music influencing Norwegian musicians (as on Marius Neset’s new record Birds) or in Brooklyn feeding into Tim Berne’s ideas, you’ll realise that if people could live on the moon they’d probably play Earthling music and so calling it “Moon music” would be a bit ridiculous.

Fairhall plays a range of styles and he can do stride, say, or the rarely heard ragtime styles, but he’s attuned to mavericks in terms of piano, the uncategorisable talents of someone like the much missed Don Pullen. Still in his mid-thirties, a music boffin and academic who has a Phd (not that a doctorate cuts any swath at all on the bandstand), he plays his own music although he crops up as a sideman, and you might come across Fairhall in a Manchester scene place such as Band on the Wall. His records include Imaginary Delta, actually recorded at the Swan Street club, stemming from an original commission by the Manchester Jazz Festival. It’s a suite “celebrating American vernacular forms, early jazz, blues, rags and stomps, featuring unusual instruments”. A high powered gigging septet time travels back and forth with Fairhall, he’s written the music for players such as Golden Age of Steam’s reeds titan James Allsopp, and improv kingpin Paul Rogers who are in the band with him. The Manchester Evening News has written of Fairhall: “There is no jazz code he hasn’t deciphered and mastered.” Do a Bletchley, and hear him in Camden tonight playing music from The Imaginary Delta. SG

Adam Fairhall above

Tickets http://www.forgevenue.org/whats-on/eventdetails/22-feb-13-pianoled-jazz-the-forge/

Watch an interview with Fairhall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk5JsS35-PY