The Toots Project at Karamel Restaurant

Phil Hopkins: chromatic harmonica • Jonathan Gee: piano • Jeremy Shoham: sax • Phil Scragg: bass • Rick Finlay: drums, percussion

The Toots Project is a live programme of music from virtuoso harmonica player Phil Hopkins, presenting an homage to the unique Belgian jazz musician Toots Thielemans, whose career over 50 years saw him working alongside the leading names in jazz, pop and media, gracing their recordings with the highly personal and stirring sound of chromatic harmonica.

Phil originally studied harmonica with the late Tommy Reilly, one of the world’s most acclaimed classical harmonic players. His highly personal presentation links engaging chamber jazz with a series of commentaries and anecdotes about Toots, taking the audience on a journey through this eclectic body of work....

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Phil Hopkins: chromatic harmonica • Jonathan Gee: piano • Jeremy Shoham: sax • Phil Scragg: bass • Rick Finlay: drums, percussion

The Toots Project is a live programme of music from virtuoso harmonica player Phil Hopkins, presenting an homage to the unique Belgian jazz musician Toots Thielemans, whose career over 50 years saw him working alongside the leading names in jazz, pop and media, gracing their recordings with the highly personal and stirring sound of chromatic harmonica.

Phil originally studied harmonica with the late Tommy Reilly, one of the world’s most acclaimed classical harmonic players. His highly personal presentation links engaging chamber jazz with a series of commentaries and anecdotes about Toots, taking the audience on a journey through this eclectic body of work.

In a concert programme endorsed by Thielemans himself shortly before his death in 2016, harmonica maestro Phil Hopkins joins some of the UK’s most inventive jazz musicians to explore the eclectic repertoire of Toots. Taking the audience on what amounts to a journey through popular music of the last 50 years, the setlist ranges from well-known themes to Sesame Street and Midnight Cowboy, Thielemans’ own composition Bluesette (which quickly became a jazz standard), and the results of famous collaborations with Benny Goodman, Paul Simon, Bill Evans and many others.

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