Chasing the Moment

Jack Shepherd

Winner of a Time Out award for ‘Best Fringe Production’.


How do you become a true jazz player? Does it involve more than just talent?


NOTICE: Saturday 17th February
Tom Silburn who plays Joe is recovering from appendicitis and has thus been replaced by Steve Smith, who will tonight perform ‘on book’.


Live jazz music is placed alongside debates concerning authenticity as ‘Chasing the Moment’ goes underground into an East London jazz club during one long night. Set amidst inner city decay, one club owner attempts to bring culture into the limelight. But as the owner lies sick in hospital his dream is left to four talented jazz musicians who battle it out to define their identity in respects to jazz culture and each other. Behind the scenes the musicians’ conversations reveal how hard their day-to-day life has become regardless of their perseverance. Their individual struggles threaten to endanger love, talent, self-respect and even the desire to live. Whilst tensions build and mutual respect is waning we find out how instinct and passion for the musical moment bridges all differences.


The artistic director of Arcola Theatre, Mehmet Ergen, and the successful actor/writer Jack Shepherd, once again are working together in a revival of Shepherd’s highly successful play about jazz music and social identity. First performed at the Southwark Playhouse Theatre, and transferred to the Edinburgh Festival and Battersea Arts Centre in 1995, ‘Chasing the Moment’ received critical acclaim winning a Time Out award for Best Fringe Production. Chasing the Moment is a rare chance to hear live jazz music in a theatrical production.

Jack ShepherdAs an actor Jack Shepherd has worked at the Royal Court during the sixties, and at the National Theatre in the seventies and eighties. He won a Best Actor award for David Mamet’s Glengarry, Glen Ross. He appears regularly on television, and, in the seventies, was closely associated with Trevor Griffiths, playing the name part in his television series, Bill Brand. Chasing the Moment shows him in his threefold role, as writer, actor and jazz pianist.