Christmas Day at Brighton’s Grand Hotel has become, as bassist Andy Lawrence puts it, “a residency”. The Nuages quartet has been playing for Christmas lunch at Brighton’s Grand Hotel since Christmas 2008. The membership of the quartet was unchanged. Goff Dubber, on clarinet and tenor and vocals fronts the quartet. Andy Lawrence was on double bass, Mick Hamer on piano and John Muxlow on drums—Mick and John being half the rhythm section of the Terry Giles Sextet.

Goff, our recently married bandleader, was in top form and the audience was extremely appreciative. According to the Melody Maker Goff and Acker Bilk were famous for having two of the most unusual names of any British jazz clarinetist. Acker died a couple of months before quartet played the Grand, so it was perhaps fitting that one of the requests that the band played was Acker’s 1962 chart-topper Stranger on the shore.