Bonding with Paper Moon

Becky Waite and Alex Scheuerer are a new jazz duo, Paper Moon. As we took the promotional shots, they told me they’d been booked to star in a James Bond evening. I could have died. On another day at least. How could this unlikely pairing of trumpet and guitar remotely approach the wall-to-wall sound of a Bond movie? But as they began to play, I took a quantum of solace in their rendering of Monty Norman’s barnstorming theme. The jangling guitar riff and the screaming brass chorus were definitely there, loud and clear.

I discovered that Becky and Alex are highly accomplished musicians, the former from the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and Birmingham Conservatoire, the latter from Switzerland via the BIMM Institute in London. Both teach music and play in a wide range of ensembles, including the function band in which they met. Besides the trumpet, Becky turned up with a flügelhorn. It had a lovely mellow sound, perfect for the duo’s laid-back style of jazz. And its case was more than useful as a support for one of my reflectors.

Paper Moon have their goldeneyes on regular spots in bars, restaurants, hotels – and, no doubt, in royal casinos. So atmospheric shots, with pools of light in traditional murky jazz-club style, were definitely in order. But my intuition told me that it was the combo, as much as the individual musicality, that would intrigue and delight audiences. So relationship was never far from my mind as I created these images. If I pushed that relationship too far, they have licence to kill …