On Thursday 26th November 2026, bandleader/bass player Fergus Quill reprises his tribute to the original Leeds alt-jazz pioneer Xero Slingsby, and his band The Works. In the week of Xero's 69th birthday, Fergus and his quintet will be playing music from their 2023 album "Up Yours! Fergus Quill Plays Xero Slingsby", a selection of reimagined music from the only two albums Xero released in the mid-1980s, a few years before he sadly died from a brain tumour.

Alto saxophonist Xero Slingsby (real name Matthew Coe) appeared on the music scene in Leeds in the late 1970s and became heavily involved in the local jazz and experimental music scenes in the city. He was a talented musician who played in venues but also on the streets as a busker, which in the 1980s was still illegal in most UK cities. This resulted in dozens of arrests and court appearances, which he always challenged and often got the cases overturned, becoming a fierce campaigner for busker's rights. He believed that street performances were a way of getting the music he loved, jazz, out to a wider public.

In 1983, he formed the groundbreaking trio Xero Slingsby & The Works alongside bass player Louis Colan and drummer Gene Velocette. Together, they played regularly in Leeds and across UK as well as mainland Europe (Holland, Belgium, Germany), for 5 years from 1983 until 1988 when Xero sadly succumbed to a brain tumour at just 30 years old. They recorded/released just two albums - "Shove It" (1985) and "Up Down" (1986) - a mix of free jazz, twisted funk, TV soundtracks, punk energy and quirky English comedic wit reminiscent of people like Monty Python and Viv Stanshall. These records, the music of the band and Xero himself have grown over the years to achieve cult status with many people, and this was further enhanced in 2022 when Xero's widow Sally Coe produced and released a film called "Shove It! The Xero Slingsby Story". Entirely funded by Xero fans via a crowdfunding campaign organised by Sally, the doc

Description supplied by the event organiser.