Forty-one members and counting! Ferg’s Imaginary Big Band, the gigantic Leeds jazz group embracing ‘chaos, imperfection and all that’
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- Ferg's Imaginary Big Band has 41 musicians on their second album "The New Atomic," with gigs typically drawing around 30 players after an early small-gig compromise that saxophonist Bess Shooter said would "never" be repeated.
- The band draws on an avant-garde lineage including Sun Ra, Loose Tubes, and Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra, positioning FIBB as queer-friendly, anti-fascist, and rougher than mainstream big-band orchestras like Ellington or Basie.
- FIBB rejects polish: Quill says members range from strong sight-readers to those who can't play instruments, with pianist Nico Widdowson adding they "embrace chaos, imperfection and all that."
- FIBB has played Ronnie Scott's and Love Supreme festival, touring the UK in a convoy of nine-seater minibuses and one "wally car" for latecomers.
- The group can only exist where rehearsal spaces cost under £30 and rents stay under £500/month, per Quill — "otherwise, I don't think you could get people to commit to this thing."
- FIBB's members — librarians, charity workers, bar staff, and teachers — make no money from the band, per Quill.
- Fergus Quill, who recently turned 30, describes himself as neurodiverse and was a magician at Freemason events before being accepted to Leeds College of Music after reciting Horace Silver's "Song for My Father" chords down the phone.
Why it matters: FIBB's existence is structurally tied to Leeds' affordability: Quill explicitly says rents must stay under £500/month for members to commit, and rehearsal rooms rarely exceed £30. With none of the 41 musicians earning money from the project, the band's survival depends entirely on a fragile economic geography — a model that could not be replicated in more expensive UK cities.
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