A bird’s eye view of jazz connoisseurs

You can tell the type of music someone listens to by what they drink. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in two sponsored jazz tours taking place this autumn.

Allied Distillers is backing its Teacher’s whisky brand with a European tour by ultra-cool jazz stars such as Ornette Coleman, Courtney Pine and Wayne Shorter of jazz fusion combo Weather Report. Definitely one for the finger-snapping beret brigade of beatniks with goatee beards.

Meanwhile Burton Ale is following a more traditional route. It has signed up the likes of “doyen of the jazz world” and arch-pratt George Melly, along with other English greats Humphrey Lyttleton and Kenny Ball. The woolly sweater brigade will be out with their bushy beards and pipes.

But just who Birds Eye Wall’s is aiming at with its Magnum Marching Band is anyone’s guess. The New Orleans-style jazz band will parade around the streets of Soho during the area’s jazz festival.