From our year-round talent development programmes to the rising stars of our Free Stage, talent development is at the heart of Cheltenham Festivals.

Our ...around town programme, supported by Cheltenham BID, is just one of the ways we impact local and rising talent here at Cheltenham Festivals. It’s always great to see when we've positively impacted local talent, and we were excited to speak to Ben Partridge on his experience with the Jazz Festival, as well as his upcoming performance with his band Sixways. 

What is your musical background? 

I am a Saxophonist, award-winning Composer and Arranger from Cheltenham, now residing in Birmingham. I graduated from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Jazz Course in 2023 with First-Class Honours and have written and played for a range of different ensembles, from Orchestras to various big bands, to my own band Sixways, which is the band I'm bringing to Cheltenham Jazz Festival this year. 

I attended Naunton Park Primary School from 2007-2012, and Balcarras School from 2012-19, and during this time I began playing the Jazz It Up programme at the Festival, playing Clarinet and then Saxophone in Gloucestershire Youth Jazz Academy, and then I graduated to the Gloucestershire Youth Jazz Orchestra.

What are some of your favourite memories of the Festival? 

My earliest memory of playing the Jazz Festival Free Stage was in 2014, and this started a streak of playing in some part of the Jazz Festival since then and that will continue this year. 

As I got older, I started to understand and appreciate more of the gigs in the Festival. Some of my highlights include Chris Potter playing with Snarky Puppy in 2017 and my first taste of the Hotel du Vin Jam Sessions in 2019 that saw Gregory Porter lead a crack team of Festival artists playing an insane 15-minute version of Moanin'. That was the same year I had my first foray into composition performed, in my last Jazz Festival performance before I left for Birmingham. 

What influence did your studies have on your musical style? 

At the Conservatoire, I became much more interested in composition. I won the 2022 Mike Gibbs Composition Prize. I was subsequently asked to arrange one of Gibbs' pieces for a special concert celebrating his 85th birthday alongside graduates Charlie Bates and Olivia Murphy, who I'm looking forward to seeing at the Festival this year, among others.

In 2023, at RBC’s Eastside Jazz Club, I wrote and performed The Enigma Suite, a set of six new big band pieces dedicated to people, places and events from my childhood. Since graduating, I have written and performed with multiple Big Bands, as well as arranging for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra's upcoming Legacy concert, a collaboration with Punch Records to celebrate Birmingham's Grime scene.

As part of RBC's partnership with the Festival, I was part of the Jam Session House Band in 2022. In 2023, I took part in the Annual Exchange Concert, playing with students from Siena and Hamburg in the Parabola Arts Centre, as well as playing on the Free Stage with the Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra.  

You're bringing your band 'Sixways' to the Free Stage this year. Could you tell us more about it? 

In late 2022, I started writing a few charts for a new sextet I had in mind, to play a support set for John Stowell in the Conservatoire. Among these was an arrangement of a Radiohead tune Knives Out. There were several people around the Birmingham scene performing tunes by artists like Adrienne Lenker, including Sixways guitarist Leo Morland, and this inspired me to draw from my own chief influence outside of jazz and combine it with my love of post-bop tenors and the large, open composition forms in the modern Big Band tradition.

I have steadily written more material for this band over the past two years, and we have performed across Birmingham and the South-West and named the band after the junction in Charlton Kings, also signifying that the music could be passed to any member of the sextet, with many parts of the music specifically written for these guys.

It goes without saying that I am hugely excited for this year's Festival and am looking forward to performing! 

View the full ...around town programme here.