MUSIC enthusiasts will be in for a treat when a new heritage museum will open up at Southend’s Jazz Centre.

The new Living Heritage Museum will officially be opened at the Jazz Centre UK, in The Beecroft Art Gallery, in Victoria Avenue, on Saturday, October 7.

Sir David Amess, MP for Southend West, will cut the ribbon to mark the opening at 11am and there is a chance that Michael Parkinson will also make an appearance.

Set up by Digby Fairweather, Jazz Centre UK opened as an independent charity to supplement the work of the National Jazz Archive, a storehouse of jazz information and documents which is based in Loughton and was founded by Digby in 1988.

In a Jazz Centre UK newsletter, Mr Fairweather wrote that there was already a wide array of ‘heritage acquisitions’.

He said: “Our heritage acquisitions already include the instruments of jazz legends - Louis Armstrong’s special trumpet and Sir John Dankworth’s first piano.

“We also have the complete archives of British jazz’s most eloquent and well-remembered spokesman Humphrey Lyttelton – his desk, his instruments and eight decades of his scrapbooks and private correspondence donated by son Stephen Lyttelton.”

The Jazz Centre UK won the financial support of Michael Parkinson, a friend of Digby, when the former talk show host donated the proceeds of a show in Southend to the centre.

The centre is run by a team of volunteers.

The opening of the centre attracted several hundred visitors and subsequent events have also been successful.