I’m sure the sunshine helped, but my day out at the Love Supreme jazz festival last weekend was a real 10 out of 10.

The UK’s first greenfield jazz festival for many years benefited from a field that was indeed green, not mud brown, as it would have been if the weather had been less kind.

But it was the music and the people that really made this an event to remember.

With acts performing on four different stages around the site, within a few hours I managed to see Snarky Puppy, Courtney Pine (in a Team GB ice hockey jersey – what a guy!), Marcus Miller, Robert Glasper Experiment, Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaires, Bryan Ferry and the Bryan Ferry Orchestra, and Kairos 4Tet (who were, in a way, the reason I was there – I had to Tweet their name to win a Jazz FM competition for my day pass).

The most memorable, though, was surely Chic featuring Nile Rodgers – whose jazz-influenced funky ’70s R&B (is “disco” still a dirty word?) had almost all of us on our feet, singing, clapping and dancing (well, moving) along to the likes of Dance, Dance, Dance,  Le Freak, and the highly appropriate Good Times.

Love Supreme attracted a huge variety of people, but despite the range of ages and backgrounds, they shared smiles and mutual respect. During the Bryan Ferry set, I noticed a young man near me taking the trouble to gather up pieces of potato chips which he’d dropped on the grass and take them to the bin.

Is there something about jazz, or open-air festivals, or sunshine, that brings out the best in people?

I know this much: it was a glorious escape from workaday woes. In the words of Chic’s Good Times:

“These are the good times,

Leave your cares behind.”

They were. And I did.

Thank you Nile, and everyone who made Love Supreme happen.

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