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A fitness equipment company is growing its R&D capabilities and expanding its HQ near Denver.

A growing Colorado-based fitness equipment company is increasing its footprint in the Denver area by expanding its headquarters in Westminster.

REP Fitness, a Longmont-founded company that employs more than 200 people, signed a lease with St. John Properties Inc. to occupy an additional 6,000-square-foot lease at the Walnut Creek Business Park, the company said.

The lease at 10855 Dover Street brings the company’s presence there to 39,600 square feet. The company has occupied 33,600 square feet at 11059 Dover St. since 2022.

The suburban space has served as the company's corporate headquarters and manufacturing operations since 2022. It includes an employee gym, locker rooms and recovery equipment, the company said.

The new space, which will also contain a testing lab, will be used for engineering, research and development, the company said. REP Fitness said it plans to hire an additional 10 employees over the next year to work in the facility.

“Leasing additional space at Walnut Creek Business Park provides tremendous synergies for our company given our current operations within the business community,” said Jon Little, the chief operating officer for REP Fitness, in a press release. “A location two miles from the airport, nearby restaurants, and other amenities were significant draws.”

The Walnut Creek Business Park is just east of the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield.

The company, founded in a Longmont garage in 2011, grew in popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic boom of home fitness gear sales. The fitness equipment company sells products including barbells, benches, conditioning equipment and racks to customers on four continents, it said. It recently launched a line of protein bars and powders.

Outside of Colorado, REP Fitness occupies an over 100,000-square-foot space in California that handles coastal distributions and operates as a showroom and a 170,000-square-foot warehouse, office and showroom in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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Gilles Peterson talks to Rob Ryan about this year’s Cross The Tracks Festival

Gilles Peterson [Ben Teo]

IF you want a paradigm of how far jazz has come in the past few years, you only have to look at the career of Ezra Collective, who have blazed a trail from youth clubs, through word-of-mouth gigs in east London, to filling Ronnie Scott’s, selling out Wembley Arena, winning the Mercury Prize, a Brit Award, scooping two nominations for Jazz FM gongs and playing up the bill at this year’s Glastonbury. That’s not counting that prime signifier of mainstream acceptance – a spot on BBC’s The One Show.

I recently spent an hour with BBC Radio 6 and Worldwide FM DJ Gilles Peterson at his Stoke Newington studio. He was one of the early supporters of Ezra and its contemporaries and is on the bill with them at Cross The Tracks (“London’s jazz, funk, soul, and hip-hop festival”) in Brockwell Park on May 25.

It might seem a way away, but tickets are selling fast, because headliners include not only Ezra (your best chance of seeing them if you haven’t got a Glasto ticket) and Gilles but also the truly wonderful fellow Mercury winner, Michael Kiwanuka.

Having talked about how the UK jazz scene is still buzzing at the moment, in no small part thanks to Ezra and their ilk, I asked Gilles about a couple of less familiar individuals on the bill.

First of all, Nala Sinephro, who is Belgian but based in London and plays harp and synths. He has said that seeing her at the Barbican was one of the best shows of last year.

“Nala’s gig at the Barbican was spectacular. What’s interesting is that she doesn’t slot into easy categories. It’s for the kind of like-minded people who like electronic and experimental music as well as jazz – she isn’t so far away from Apex Twin but she also very much in the spirit of Alice Coltrane and the UK jazz thing as well. It’s just another side of what’s been growing for the past few years – right now, you can’t really categorise stuff.”

If you need convincing, have a listen to Nala’s cosmic electronica vibes on the albums Space 1.8 and Endlessness.

Also on the bill are Free Nationals (Anderson Paak’s kick-ass backing band), Jordan Rakei, Seun Kuti (son of Afrobeat icon Fela) and Cymande, all representing a different corner of Gilles’ constituency (he didn’t curate, but a partner of his did). I asked him about another relative newcomer that isn’t yet a household name, Lynda Dawn.

“She is a bit like Minnie Ripperton – who used to work in the office at Cadet/Chess back in the day before she got spotted,” he said. “Lynda used to work at the House of the Barnabas in Soho Square, at the top of Greek Street.

“That’s when I first met her. But she was doing music on the side all the time, putting all her resources into recording. I think she’s quite special, something different. She started off a bit like Patrice Rushen, very 1980s, and then when she came up with this latest record [11th Hour] , it was wow. It’s like Gamble and Huff or you know, The Jones Girls, which nobody is really doing.”

Listen and buy on Bandcamp: https://lyndadawn.bandcamp.com/album/11th-hour

What about his own set on the day? Does he have a standard set list that he pulls out for festivals?

“No. I should have. It would make life a lot less stressful. I’m just not ready for that. So, I’m still kind of approaching my DJ sets like I’ve always done, which is quite free. Although I’ll admit that not quite knowing how I’m going to begin a set until five seconds before I start, that can be scary.

“But there’s also a lot of ground to cover. I’m 45 years into to my career. I mean, some people remember me from Dingwall’s, or they like my Cuban or Brazilian albums, or the Talkin’ Loud era.

“And some people enjoy what I am doing at the moment. Getting all that in 90 minutes is really hard. So, I need, like, I need five hours. That’s what I tend to get booked for.”

Will he be doing five hours at Cross the Tracks?

He smiles. “I might have to settle for three.”

• Cross The Tracks (https://www.xthetracks.com) is on Sunday May 25 at Brockwell Park, Brixton.

• Gilles Peterson has a three-hour programme on BBC Radio 6 on Saturdays at 3pm and a four-hour one on his own Worldwide FM on Thursday mornings – see https://worldwidefm.net/collection/gilles-peterson He also plays at and co-curates the We Out Here festival in August in Dorset (https://weoutherefestival.com/). More on that at a later date

Gilles has long been a champion of the fluid and dynamic British-Bahraini trumpet/flugel player Yazz Ahmed, who has an ambitious new album out called A Paradise in the Hold (Night Time Stories). It is inspired by folk music from her Middle Eastern homeland, and it reminds me of some of the late trumpeter Jon Hassall’s Maarifa Street projects – jazz that features interesting Arabic scales, tones and timbres.

The record has no fewer than five vocalists, including the always intriguing and adventurous Brigitte Beraha, who performs an improvised vocal duet of aquatic sounds with Randolph Matthews on the splendid Mermaids’ Tears. Ahmed is on top form throughout.

Buy it on double vinyl – it’s a stunning, highly tactile package (visually think of a more legible version of Kip Hanrahan’s A Thousand Nights and a Night series) that you simply can’t duplicate with CD or streaming.

She brings the album and her large ensemble to the ICA on March 29. Tickets: https://www.ica.art/live/yazz-ahmed

Sadly, this clashes with another interesting concert by The Casimir Connection, which has a new album called Reflections (Caliban Sounds). The music for this group is composed by saxophonist Diane McLoughlin and the line-up is completed by pianist Alcyon Mick, who has always impressed in whatever setting I have seen her, Kit Massey (violin/viola) and Tim Fairhill (double bass).

No, it’s not strictly jazz, more what used to called Third Stream (classical meets jazz) but there is a strong jazz sensibility in how the individuals listen and react to each other. As the album title suggests, this is plangent, emotive and expressive music, full of space and light.

McLoughlin says it deals with “uncertainty in times of loss and war”, which seems appropriate for this particular moment in history. Listen especially for her beautiful soprano sax, an instrument that in the wrong lips can be harsh and abrasive, here tamed into a thing of beauty.

The Casimir Connection is performing at St Mary’s Church, Primrose Hill on March 29, which should provide an appropriate setting and acoustic for such delicate, well-crafted music. Details: https://thecasimirconnection.com/

Diane McLoughlin is also part of the Alison Rayner Quartet, which performs full-on, swinging, melodic jazz (and beyond). It has a new album out Sema4 (Blow The Fuse Records) which was recorded live at the Vortex in Dalston. The group is made up of Diana, bassist Alison Rayner, guitarist Diedre Cartwright, pianist Steve Lodder and drummer Buster Birch, all of whom make their personalities felt through playing and composition. Together their hive mind produces cohesive yet free-wheeling music with that happily encompasses jazz, Latin and rock and, thanks to the live feel, always fizzes with vigour and vitality.

Simin Tander [Dovile Sermokas]

Also pushing at the boundaries of what constitutes jazz is Simin Tander, a German-Afghan singer, whose elegiacally atmospheric and beautifully produced album The Wind (Jazzland) draws on songs and poetry from Afghanistan, Norway, Spain and beyond.

Her highly flexible, keening voice is full of powerful yearning and emotion one minute, sultry and breathy the next, with the occasional outbreak of keening heartache.

Kudos to her band, especially Swiss drummer Samuel Rohrer, who often plays like he’s on an ECM session channelling the late, great Norwegian percussionist Jon Christensen.

Again, it ventures outside the jazz envelope into world music, but listen without prejudice, as one local lad once said.

If you like your vocal jazz more conventional – and with a hefty dose of southern roots – try singer-songwriter Robin Phillips’ Return from the Source album (repmusic), which is inspired by a motorbike ride from Chicago to New Orleans. He was, in fact, retracing the journey that jazz made up the Mississippi, with added side trips by him to the likes of Muscle Shoals studios.

The original songs inspired by that epic trip are smart, infectious, funky and Philips is backed by a raft of great musicians – oh, and he can play that piano.

The album is launching at the Pizza Express Soho on March 26. I expect there will be a party at the pizza when these tunes are allowed out into the world.

More details: https://www.pizzaexpresslive.com/whats-on/robin-phillips-return-from-the-source