One of the artists we are very excited about seeing at Cheltenham Jazz Festival 2025 are Flight Call. No stranger to Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Georgia Cécile returns with her project alongside L.A Daniels and Pete Horsfall for their vocal harmony group Flight Call. They are an act not to be missed.

Georgia Cécile can boast wins for UK Jazz Act Of The Year’ and ‘Vocalist of the Year’ at the 2022 Jazz FM awards. She has toured with Gregory Porter which saw her opening four nights at the Royal Albert Hall. Georgia Cécile is becoming quite a festival favourite.

L.A Daniels (Lucy-Anne Daniels is a Jazz Vocalist who combines Gospel and Jazz. Her melodic vocals will take you on a journey of beautiful and captivating lyrics.

Pete Horsfall will not only impress his audience with his incredible vocals but he is also known for being an award winning trumpet player. Horsfall has performed at the Royal Albert Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center, Paris’ Duc Des Lombards, The North Sea Jazz Festival, Glastonbury Festival and Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club amongst many others. He has also worked with the likes of Kurt Elling, Jamie Cullum, De La Soul, Guy Barker, Joe Stilgoe, Clare Teal, Kansas Smittys, Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), Friendly Fires and DJ Premier.

Together, the trio are quite the powerful team and this vocal harmony group will very likely “wow” their audience at the Parabola Arts Centre on May 2nd. Tickets and info here.

We caught up with Flight Call to discuss their upcoming show at the festival and more!

Hello. We are very excited about seeing you at Cheltenham Jazz Festival- Are you all prepared for the show? Is there a lot of rehearsal time?

Yes we rehearse a lot! We are always working on new material and we want it to sound as tight as possible!

Tell us about some of the music you have put out such as Solitude.

We love covering some of our favourite standards and this is one by one of our hero’s Duke Ellington!

Who did you work with on Solitude?

Alex Bryson, Ferg Ireland & Shaney Forbes.

Do you get involved in the production? As I know you do your own arrangements.

We produce our own records and arrangements. We like to have maximum creative control!

Will you be playing original and cover music?

Yes we’ll be performing some brand new music – our pianist Alex Bryson has written and arranged some songs for us. We’re super excited to perform them for the first time at the festival.

Pete I know you are also well known as a trumpet player. Will the trumpet make an appearance??

Yes I’ll bring the trumpet out for a song or two for sure! Although it’s nice to focus on the vocals with this project, in the main.

So take us back to forming – how did that come to be? How did you all meet?

We met through mutual friends in the jazz scene! Pete had heard of us and contacted us on social media with the idea for the band. We thought it was a unique idea to bring 3 singers together. There aren’t many vocal jazz harmony groups in the city!

You still all do your solo work – how do you make time for two projects to work and get all
your schedules to work – is it difficult sometimes?

It’s hard to fit everything in honestly! But we make it work because ultimately we love the music!

As well as Jazz, I cover a lot of country music and in country music, radio is a challenge for
female artists to be played even in vocal harmony groups where it’s mixed. What is radio play like in the UK and US for female jazz musicians and is it more of a fair playlist?

Things are improving for female artists in the jazz scene but we are still underrepresented. Especially as independent artists it is tough! But we are well supported by station like Jazz FM and have headlined major festivals and concert halls.

How are you finding the Jazz scene now from the beginning of your career or even the beginning of your interest in the genre. I am finding, especially with events such as Cheltenham Jazz Festival, that it is really reaching a much broader audience!

We are definitely seeing a broader and more diverse audience at our gigs! We really hope that trend continues.

Back to the Jazz Festival – What does Cheltenham Jazz Festival mean to you?

It’s the most well known and best attended festival outside of London for jazz. It’s the place we’ve all play major headline shows and those have always been landmarks for us. In addition to our own show at the festival, we are also guests of the BBC Concert Orchestra on the main stage earlier in the day – another landmark for us.

Will you be able to see any artists at the festival and if so, who?

The cool thing about the festival is wandering around and seeing who is playing without planning much! So hopefully we can catch a few things and will be looking out for new acts we don’t know anything about! But mainly we’ll be focused on delivering a polished performance ourselves!!

Where else can we see you this year and what are you working on at the moment?

We have a central London show scheduled for the autumn, so be on the look out for that announcement!