The monthly Jazz Lunch at Tenby’s Imperial Hotel on April 16 was missing its vocalist, writes Keith Clarke, but Gethin Liddington’s singing trumpet guaranteed that no one left disappointed.

With Keith Little on keyboard and Bill Lynn on bass, the trio of dyed-in-the-wool jazzers treated the audience to a wide-ranging programme of jazz standards to blow away the cobwebs on a foggy day.

They kicked off with Turner Layton’s ‘After you’ve gone’ (dedicating it to absent singer Jane Williams, who was under the weather) then got stuck into a barnstorming first set before slowing it down (‘For our sake as much as yours’) with ‘Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans’, with Bill Lynn turning in a beautifully spare double bass solo.

Lynn’s work was brilliant throughout, plucking, bowing and occasionally slapping the bass, endlessly inventive in solos. There was equally glittery work from the keyboard, where Keith Little is the master of so many styles. At one point, Gethin Liddington stepped out as Little and Lynn let loose on a hot boogie-woogie (‘Rubbish,’ said Liddington as they finished).

Liddington is on the jazz staff at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. His glorious tone on trumpet was a joy, but he had also brought along a flugelhorn, whose beautifully mellow sound was a perfect contrast to the glistening pungency of the trumpet.

The tunes came as thick and fast as the gags (as the wine slipped down, a Henry Mancini favourite was renamed ‘Days of Wine and Cirrhosis’) until a crushingly beautiful ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ on flugel and a bouncy ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ brought proceedings to a close.

Next up at the Jazz Lunches is the Keith Marshall Quartet with vocalist Sarah Benbow on May 14. Benbow is a well-known Pembrokeshire singing teacher and director of women’s vocal group Bella Voce, so that is a definite date for the diary.