Gena Davies: My name is Gena Davies I've been living in Brecon since 1971. I moved here from Pontypridd, it's a town where it looks small, but there's a lot going on, could hardly ever walk down into town without meeting someone you know?
Interviewer: You are a photographer?
Gena Davies: Yes.
Interviewer: So tell me about your photography of the Jazz Festival events.
Gena Davies: Yes. Well, the first one...how could i put it. It was a bit of a surprise just hearing there was going to be a jazz festival back and it had always been a place of well, agriculture shows and sheep dog trials. A Jazz Festival sounded extremely exotic for this particular town. I didn't know about all the preparations of course it was just something that was happened. So I went down to town and it was rather like just before the fair but without all the stands. Town Center absolutely free of traffic. People just standing about waiting for things to happen. Suddenly, cafes and pubs had put chairs and tables out on the pavement. Wonderful. Then everyone started crowded round the band stand and in march The adamant and croquet band. Wonderful.
Gena Davies: For the next few days, the town was swinging a group of miners, this was when the miners strike was on, came up from Merthyr with a band of their own. They were more or less positioned, just by the doors... not far from the doors of the guild hall by Lloyds Bank. So there were now about three bands going. And there were also professional concerts, but I didn't go to any of them at a time, i don't think i could've afforded the tickets. I was out of work at that particular moment. I was taken photographs after photographs. Everything was swinging.
Gena Davies: As the festival got bigger I took photographs of some of the big names. I remember, Lionel Hampton. That was in 1993. And Wynton Marsalis who's now the head of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, that was 1993 and Stephen Capelli. That was a tremendous year. And George Melly was a regular as he lived just down the road at Scethrog.
Gena Davies: What I've always liked was the street music and the band...They... It was a lot freer than in the hall you have to be a bit careful in a hall not to annoy people or the stewards. And as the festival got more professionally ran, and security got tight, it got a bit more difficult. You always seem to be frightened at times, the lighting assistance and television cameras were sometimes a nuisance, because they always grabbed the best positions. And when the theatre came along, there was sound checks as well. I remember, they sometimes went on for a very long time the sound checks and irritated the people who were waiting. When I started photography i had an ambition to be the Ansel Adams as the Brecon Beacons National Park. I've got a book out it still on sale at the hours if you want to know The Brecon Jazz Story, but it ends in 2013 no 2012 book was published in 2013. I feel like saying, get a copy of the book.