Meet the band
Vicki Kenny — piano
Vicki is a registered music therapist, jazz pianist and educator. She is band leader for The Alley Cats, a project set up to bring jazz to people of all ages. Vicki performs jazz regularly in and around Cambridge. She is the pianist for Brazilian jazz group Cores do Samba, and plays regularly at The Ivy Restaurant with the Cores do Samba trio and at The Gonville Hotel as a duo for repmusic.
Alastair Appleton — saxophone
Alastair works for the University as a software developer, and is a keen jazz saxophonist in his spare time.
Alongside the Alley Cats, Alastair performs with Iroko — a drum-led fusion group playing classic Afrobeat music, original compositions, and reinterpretations of jazz standards superimposed on rhythms from around Africa and South America.
He is a member of Better Than TV, a modern jazz group which draws on a wide range of styles and influences, and explores eclectic and novel instrumentation.
Alastair also does occasional ad-hoc work in various small groups, performing at weddings and corporate functions, and he can often be found down one of the local jazz jam sessions.
Simon Fothergill — trombone
Simon loves to add to the beauty of the world, through music. He plays trombone in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and London, as well as piano, ukulele, recorder and occasionally didgeridoo! He has eclectic tastes, but loves all sorts of jazz and especially dixieland, as well as folk music and of course Disney! He also composes, arranges and leads community rehearsals.
He is privileged to play alongside some wonderful and incredible musicians, in serendipitous ensembles and jam sessions, as well as in a number of regular groups besides the Alley Cats: Harmony in Harlem play Michael Kilpatrick's erudite transcriptions of Duke Ellington's big band repertoire; Better Than TV, led by Sergio Contrino, has to be heard to fully appreciate is unique blend of Latin, classical and funk and is available on Spotify! Martin Kemp's Mingusology and Organised Chaos play beautiful jazz arrangements; Malcolm Talbot's Big Brass — a community big band — tells the story of jazz from the 1880s to the 1980s; and Simon's Punting Players is a community Christmas busking group who perform annually whilst punting down the Cam for charity.
Jane Hollingworth — percussion
Jane Hollingworth learned to play drums from the age of 38 and has been playing ever since. She has led Brazilian and Haitian drum workshops since 1994 and plays congas, jazz drum kit and lately, trombone.
Besides the Alley Cats, Jane plays drums in her afrobeat band, Iroko, and for several other jazz bands in Cambridge and Colchester, including Blue Town, Jazz Galore, Brass Rose and Cambridge 251. She plays trombone for the Norwich-based Vibe City Street Brass and for a big band in Cambridge, but her first love has always been congas. She loves Brazilian music — all Brazilian music — but particularly the ritual rhythms of the African diaspora. She has spent at least a month every year in Brazil for the past decade, sometimes working with music teachers in schools in the poorer areas of Rio Grande do Sul.
Giulio Lampronti — bass
Upright and electric bassist and guitarist, Giulio Isacco Lampronti received a degree in jazz with full marks at the Conservatory "G.B. Martini" of Bologna (Italy) and also holds a PhD in Mineralogy. He's currently a research technician at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, but you'll also see him regularly play at many venues in Cambridge with Cores do Samba, The Andy Bowie Quartet, David Ellingham’s Fromage à Trois, and Rcubed.
Ros Russell — vocals
Inspired by her dad's music collection and skiffle past (he played the washboard for Les Hobeaux at the 2i's Coffee Bar in 1950s Soho), Ros's love of jazz started in her early teens, listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Fats Domino and Miles Davis amongst others.
She regularly performs in many Cambridge venues with a wide range of jazz musicians. She has fronted her own project Rcubed and has performed in groups ranging from duos to full big bands. She is co-founder and director of the Cambridge International Jazz Festival, which is now approaching its 5th year.
Ros holds a PhD in Molecular & Computational Biology and has worked in several areas including immunology and cancer biology with various biotech companies.
Paul Stubbs — trumpet
Paul was fourteen when he had his first professional engagement — a dance band performance at (what is now known as) Watford Colosseum. It was a long gig; it finished when he was fifteen, just after midnight! Since then, he has survived a three-decade career of small-group jazz, big bands, shows and pop functions.
Notably, he made a live TV appearance on Channel 4's 'The Big Breakfast' (on the day Jeffrey Archer was imprisoned for perjury!) A fluent improviser, his influences include Freddie Hubbard, Miles Davis and Willy Wonka… all of whom he thinks of as 'pure imagination'.