{"id":671384,"date":"2026-07-03T09:28:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T09:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/671384\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T09:28:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T09:28:08","slug":"forty-one-members-and-counting-fergs-imaginary-big-band-the-gigantic-leeds-jazz-group-embracing-chaos-imperfection-and-all-that-jazz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/671384\/","title":{"rendered":"Forty-one members and counting! Ferg\u2019s Imaginary Big Band, the gigantic Leeds jazz group embracing \u2018chaos, imperfection and all that\u2019 | Jazz"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fergus Quill picks me up from Leeds station in his Nissan Micra \u2013 152,000 miles on the clock, double bass expertly slotted between seats \u2013 and drives me to meet his band.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m expecting a handful of people, but for the next half an hour, members of Ferg\u2019s Imaginary Big Band just keep arriving, until the tables outside Headingley\u2019s Hyde Park Book Club overflow with musicians and instrument cases. When it starts to rain, they shuffle indoors, gather in the bar\u2019s snug room and begin playing their noisy, joyful music.<\/p>\n

Forty-one musicians play on FIBB\u2019s second album, The New Atomic, though for gigs they usually operate at about 30. There was one early gig where they compromised on size. \u201cNever again,\u201d says saxophonist Bess Shooter.<\/p>\n

Even with today\u2019s svelte 10-piece, their principles shine through. \u201cI\u2019d say we\u2019re pretty traditionalist,\u201d Quill says, though in their hands, tradition sounds radical. In the snug, they play a tribute to late US trumpeter Jaimie Branch<\/a>, and songs from their new album such as I Shall Not Be Moved, which brims with angry fire.<\/p>\n

FIBB are rooted in the principles of revered bandleaders such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie: saxophones, trumpets and trombones backed by a rhythm section, playing imaginatively scored ensemble sections that expand out into individual solos. But FIBB are more in a lineage of big band dreamers, from Loose Tubes to Sun Ra to Charlie Haden\u2019s Liberation Music Orchestra: queer-friendly, anti-fascist and sprawling, they\u2019re quite different to the refined orchestras of the big band mainstream.<\/p>\n

Their sound is rough and brazen, but not without playfulness. Take, for example, Play the Names, in which a discordant opening chord collapses into band members yelling out their names in frantic sequence. The voices come together, spelling out F-E-R-G (of course), before the messy instrumental chaos returns over a bustling funk figure.<\/p>\n

\u2018You have to have an independent voice\u2019: Fergus Quill, bandleader. Photograph: Peter Eyles<\/p>\n

To be in the band, Quill says, \u201cyou don\u2019t have to be the strongest sight-reader, but you do have to have an independent musical voice\u201d. Top improvisers play with people who don\u2019t read music, who play with members who can\u2019t even play instruments but join in wholeheartedly. \u201cWe embrace chaos, imperfection and all that,\u201d pianist Nico Widdowson adds, \u201cbut we all want to be the best musicians that we can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The New Atomic is the perfect vehicle for FIBB\u2019s idiosyncratic blend of sincerity and whimsy. And, despite the many references \u2013 wailing New Orleans funeral marches, Bob Dylan covers, odes to Ellington, punk and Cold war-era musical anxiety \u2013 there\u2019s a powerful G-force as this enormous unit swings altogether from idea to idea. You feel swept up by their sound.<\/p>\n

The band isn\u2019t yet 10 years old, but already its history is starting to resemble that of the Fall, another band with a talismanic frontman. \u201cIf it\u2019s me and your nan on bongos, it\u2019s Ferg\u2019s Imaginary Big Band,\u201d says Quill, who is the band\u2019s bass player, main composer and leader, wrangling the chaos from the front of the ensemble.<\/p>\n

The name began \u201cas a figure of speech,\u201d drummer Josh Ketch says; pub chats would regularly return back to Quill\u2019s plans for a behemoth big band. Out of a music college Sun Ra project in 2018, gigs grew steadily, stymied only briefly by Covid. They\u2019ve played at Ronnie Scott\u2019s and Love Supreme festival, and, thanks to a convoy of nine-seater minibuses and one \u201cwally car\u201d (for those running late), they\u2019ve also toured the UK.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Their continued existence is a testament to Leeds and its spaces: to the venues such as Book Club, the Brudenell or the Domino who put on their gigs, and others such as the Attic and Eiger Studios who make space for fortnightly Monday rehearsals (\u201cI rarely pay over \u00a330 for a rehearsal space,\u201d Quill says). Could FIBB happen anywhere else in the UK? \u201cIt has to happen in a place where the rent is under \u00a3500 a month,\u201d Quill replies. \u201cOtherwise, I don\u2019t think you could get people to commit to this thing, or have the time to do it.\u201d It almost goes without saying that nobody makes any money from the band. But the musicians, librarians, charity workers, bar staff and teachers manage to make it work.<\/p>\n

Back in the Micra, we whip through the back streets of Headingley and out of the window Quill points to some FIBB affiliates who couldn\u2019t get time off work to meet up. He has always felt best living outside the strictures of a nine-to-five, and indeed other standard ways of being.<\/p>\n

In his youth, first in Essex, later Saffron Walden, Quill was \u201cin and out of mainstream education\u201d. He loved music, but never got on with the UK\u2019s graded exam system. An inspirational teacher gave him an early crash-course in jazz and his parents were also extremely supportive. \u201cI was a neurodiverse kid with additional educational needs,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen it was decided that I was interested in music, they just laid out instruments in the house, and I went between them. I was always just allowed to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving out of a Quaker boarding school to the local state sixth form, Quill found people playing \u201csqueaky clean hardcore punk, so I did some of that\u201d. He was drawn to outsiders \u2013 his favourite musician was early 20th-century American experimentalist Charles Ives<\/a> \u2013 and teachers gave him more: Lou Reed, Charles Mingus and Frank Zappa.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t plan to go to music college: \u201cI was making all right money being a magician at Freemason events, and then busking on the street.\u201d But when friends moved away to university, he rang up music colleges. Stressing that he could double on electric and upright bass, Leeds College of Music accepted him after he recited the chords to Horace Silver\u2019s Song for My Father down the phone. \u201cI didn\u2019t do an audition or anything,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t think you could get away with that now.\u201d At college, he quickly found Hamish Dixon, a constant in the FIBB universe, whose role in the band is simply \u201cnoise\u201d. They\u2019ve lived together for 11 years.<\/p>\n

Quill leading a practice session for Ferg\u2019s Imaginary Big Band. Photograph: Peter Eyles<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a punkish energy to the FIBB, which involves a collective unlearning of things the jazz world has taught them. \u201cWhen I was younger,\u201d Shooter says, \u201cthere was so much in the scene about never doing anything for exposure, or for no money. Now, there\u2019s a whole load of people like us, getting together to make stuff just because they want to.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day ends at the local Hollywood Bowl, a regular hangout. Quill recently turned 30, prompting some reflection on a chaotic past decade. \u201cFor a long time I was actually quite unhappy, quite ill, but was putting that to the side because I just had this drive to create things.\u201d For a while, bowling was, he says, his only \u201coutside\u201d from an all-consuming musical life.<\/p>\n

With time, balance has come, by embracing sociability, rejecting \u201ca CV-driven career,\u201d and realising his role as a caregiver to a band with ages spanning 30 years. \u201cIt\u2019s great \u2013 now I\u2019ve got kids in my band, I can try to have a well-rounded life,\u201d he says. He\u2019s moving into a housing co-op; he\u2019ll continue to write this music; they\u2019ll tour again soon. The big band dream continues.<\/p>\n

The New Atomic is released 26 June via Trash City Records<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fergus Quill picks me up from Leeds station in his Nissan Micra \u2013 152,000 miles on the clock,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-671384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}