Day one of Love Supreme 2025
- Hilary Seabrook
- Jul 4
- 2 min read
Updated: 7 days ago
The UK’s biggest green field jazz festival happens at Glynde Place, a few miles north of Brighton, close to the south coast. 2025 sees the 12th Love Supreme Jazz Festival and it felt bigger than ever.
Friday is typically the quietest day, although there was a real sense of excitement as soon as the stages opened at 5pm. Certainly, by early evening the camp sites were looking full and the food stands were doing a roaring trade in everything from vegan curry (which kept me going!) to venison burgers. And all around, there’s great music playing. Even on the camp site, everyone appeared to have a portable speaker with a variety of sounds emanating and mingling: it was all very friendly and tent erecting seemed to have become a team sport in which anyone can get involved when tent poles don’t seem to match. This music brings good natured souls together and we’re all united in the hunt for dynamic music that is either new, exciting or familiar.
Before I’d heard more than a few bars of young and upcoming blues man Toby Lee in the Supreme Standards tent, I bumped into Jazz FM presenter Simon Phillips.
A few more minutes and it was time for Jamila Woods on the South Downs stage, followed swiftly by Durand Jones and the Indications. Both of these artists are well-respected and clearly have a huge following, given the size of the appreciative audiences. For many of the audience members, the cost of a weekend ticket is based on seeing one favourite artist and then everyone else is a bonus.
Final show (for me) was Mama Terra, back on the Supreme Standards stage. This is proper British (actually Scottish) jazz, with a global perspective. Their line-up is impressive and from the very opening bars their sound filled the tent and the surrounding field. One of the stunning acts currently setting the Acid Jazz scene on fire and then dancing around the flames, Mama Terra is a new outfit that’s only been around for a couple of years, but clearly they’re already finding a following: Friday night was bouncing.
You can hear more about the weekend with some interviews on the latest episode of Harmonious World
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