Famous Jazz Musicians Give 20 Reasons To "Come See The Show"

The greatest names of jazz history give you 20 reasons to see our concert Jazz In New York Part 2 at Cadogan Hall on January 28th 2017:

#20: To see all that's purple, green and swinging: "I don't care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing."  Miles Davis

#19: To see entertainment pip business sense: "Musically, the bebop route was magnificent, but businesswise, it was the dumbest thing I ever did." Woody Herman

 

#18: To see if they've learnt how to play it yet: "Bebop is the music of the future (as soon as they learn how to play it)." Dexter Gordon

 

#17: Because we all hanker after yesteryear: "Bebop has set music back twenty years." Tommy Dorsey

#16: To live life on the edge: "Bebop was about change, about evolution. It wasn't about standing still and being safe." Miles Davis

 

#15: Because of Enrico Tomasso's Swingtette:

  
#14: To surrender to the dark side: "I don't know where Jazz is going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens." Thelonious Monk

#13: To get a fix during Dry-January: "Jazz is like wine. When it is new it's only for the experts, but when it gets older everybody wants it."  Steve Lacy

#12: For an evening of the utmost sincerity: "As long as there are people trying to play music in a sincere way, there will be Jazz." Lee Konitz

#11: For a foot tapping good time: "They're not particular whether you're playing a flat 5th or a ruptured 129th as long as they can dance." Dizzy Gillespie

#10: To help us keep the band together: "To keep a band together you simply need a gimmick. The gimmick I use is to pay them money."  Duke Ellington

#9: For a warm welcome no matter who you are: "If it wasn't for hustlers, gangsters and gamblers there'd be no Jazz. Wasn't the middle-class who said Let's go hear Bird tonight." Betty Carter

#8: To change your life: "I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in the late '40s and '50s." Robert Wyat

#7: For a musical epiphany: "I was first awakened to musical exploration by Dizzy and Bird." John Coltrane

 

#6: For an escape from Brexit, Trump and Dry-January: "Jazz is music made by and for people who have chosen to feel good in spite of conditions." Johnny Griffin

#5: For the disreputable musicians of the Echoes Of Ellington Orchestra: "By and large Jazz has always been like the kind of a man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with." Duke Ellington

#4: To settle the question: "As it enters the ear does it come in like broken glass or does it come in like honey?" Eddie Condon

#3: To keep calm and hear the Swing Era evolve into Be-Bop before your very ears!

 

#2: To commune with Amy: "I would say that jazz is my own language." Amy Winehouse

 

#1: Because two out of three ain't bad: "The only things that the United States has given to the world are skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails." Federico Garcia Lorca (writer - everyone's a critic)

Review: "a packed house for their latest London Jazz Festival extravaganza" - 1956 - A Jazz Jubilee at Cadogan Hall

REVIEW: 1956 - A Jazz Jubilee at Cadogan Hall (2016 EFG LJF)

 

Pete Long directing 1956 -  A Jazz Jubilee
Wayne McIntyre / Jazz Repertory Company

1956 - A Jazz Jubilee 
Cadogan Hall, 18 November 2016. EFG London Jazz Festival. Review by Peter Vacher) 

Richard Pite and the Jazz Repertory Company have made Cadogan Hall into something of a home from home. What’s more, they have attracted and kept a loyal audience, this evident yet again with a packed house for their latest LJF extravaganza. They’ve also won a regular place for their kind of serious-yet-fun re-examinations of jazz milestones within the LJF’s sometimes stern-faced annual assembly of music. Indeed, Pite was able to announce that a date had been already set for them to appear at next year’s festival. Applause all round. 

You Make Me Feel So Young - 1956: A Jazz Jubilee

 - The EFG London Jazz Festival

In coming up with a suitably enticing programme this time, Pite had looked inwards – well, to his own birthdate and deduced that 1956 was not only momentous for him but for jazz as well. In that year Count Basie released his breakthrough album April in Paris (this followed two years later by the timeless The Atomic Mr Basie), Sinatra and Riddle combined with Songs for Swinging Lovers while Ella Fitzgerald had her Cole Porter Songbook and tellingly, Duke Ellington’s At Newport recording marked a transforming resurgence in his fortunes. This gave Pite and company a template for the concert, with the very spirited Pete Long Orchestra of which drummer Pite is a part supported by vocalists Georgina Jackson covering Ella, and Iain Mackenzie channelling Sinatra each taking turns to recreate choice items from these classic recordings. 

Too Darn Hot - 1956: A Jazz Jubilee 

- The EFG London Jazz Festival 

As ever the proceedings were leavened by Long’s humour even as the music-making was pursued with a seriousness of purpose that any historian would applaud. Long has his own well-honed repertory company, all crack players and many quite young, who can handle the dynamic diversity required of them, seguing, say, from the ultra-slow Li’l Darlin’ to an up-tempo rouser like Shiny Stockings without turning the proverbial hair, while managing the subtleties of Miss Otis Regrets or You’re Sensational. Jackson and Mackenzie stayed close to their chosen briefs but without in any way aping their great predecessors, each authoritative and engaging in their own way, much the same applying to the band’s soloists, most notably tenorist Dean Masser and his tour-de-force on Ellington’s Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, as he let go a flow of ideas that may have sought to parallel that of Paul Gonsalves back in the heady days of ’56 Newport but if anything, surpassed the original. 

Shiny Stockings - 1956: A Jazz Jubilee 

- The EFG London Jazz Festival 

Right from the off, with altoist Simon Marsh recalling Johnny Hodges on Jeep’s Blues it was clear that Long had worked hard with his team to get the band sound right, the dynamics spot-on and tempos properly respected, this sparked by the likes of lead trumpeters George Hogg and Tommy Walsh plus lead trombonist Andy Flaxman and the marvellous rhythm team of pianist Nick Dawson, given his head on a JATP tribute in the manner of Oscar Peterson, guitarist Dave Chamberlain, bassist Joe Pettitt and Pite himself, tireless at the drums. With Long added on tenor, plus Masser and new find Joe Shenoy, there was even a gutsy tenor battle to stir the multitude, this before Jackson settled things down with more from the Cole Porter songbook. Highlights? Just hearing this fine band tear into the likes of Splanky and Whirlybird with Dawson excelling was enough to make even the most hardened Basie-ite overflow with joy. 

Whirlybird - From the 2016 EFG London Jazz Festival

And yes, we did sing Happy Birthday for Pite, the man without whom… as Long put it, this before the evening’s final surprise, their rendition, with Chamberlain hot on electric guitar, of Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock, Jackson, Mackenzie and trombonist Chris Dean vocalising out front, as if to warn/remind us of the radical shift in public taste in the offing back then.

Velcro, Lord Byron and Whirlwind Year Of Jazz

So farewell then 2016 – the fastest year on record.

“When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning - how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.”  Lord Byron

Well even with velcro and zippers replacing Byron’s buttons that’s still not leaving much more time for the rest and the best of life.    The start of 2016 seems like around a fortnight ago, Brexit was last weekend I think and Halloween was around twenty minutes ago.  Talking of trick or treat - it was only the battle between Hillary and the Donald which seemed to make this speedy year interminable.

And if you think 2016 was fast here's Professor Long’s 
"A Brief History Of Time" (And The Jazz Rhythm Section) 

in four and a half minutes from our 

Complete & Utter History Of Jazz (Without The Boring Bits) concert.

The Jazz Repertory Company managed to squeeze in five Cadogan Hall concerts in 2016 and it was a pleasure to see a packed house for our last one – our celebration of 1956, (my 60^th birthday treat).  As it went so well we’ve decided on a brilliant concept for next year – 1957!  That’ll be happening on Sunday November 12^th  2017 as part of the London Jazz Festival.

2017 is also the centenary of the birth of Ella Fitzgerald so the centrepiece of the 1957 show will be a tribute to the magnificent songstress with selections from her Duke Ellington songbook, Irving Berlin songbook and her two 1957 albums with Louis Armstrong.  Tickets will be on sale soon.

Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong

2017 is also the centenary of the very first jazz record.  It was a recording by the Original Dixieland Jass Band and here we are playing both sides of the record at two of our recent shows.

Centenary Of The First Ever Jazz Record - By The Original Dixieland Jass Band 

- played at our Complete and Utter History Of Jazz (Without The Boring Bits) concert.

We do hope you can make it to our next show on Saturday January 28^th at Cadogan Hall.  It’s Jazz In New York Part 2 and you can read more about it here.

Have a splendid Christmas, thanks for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you at our concerts in 2017.    (see here for our diary.)

 The Jazz Repertory Company - Worth Making A Noise About.

A Complete & Utter History Of Jazz (Almost) - Another 100 Years Of Jazz

Life, The Saxophone and Everything - a new Jazz Repertory Company show at Cadogan Hall

L-R: Nick Dawson, Dave Chamberlain, Enrico Tomasso
Georgina Jackson, Pete Long, Richard Pite

Peter Vacher interviews one of the musicians involved in A Complete & Utter History Of Jazz (Almost) - Another 100 Years Of Jazz, singer/ trumpeter Georgina Jackson to get a look at the new show. 

Having devised and performed a popular concert programme , snappily entitled 100 Years of Jazz in 99 Minutes, that encompassed the developments in jazz from then until now, Richard Pite and the Jazz Repertory Company were left scratching their heads as to what to do next. They had presented this programme some thirty or more times, to considerable critical acclaim and audience satisfaction. But they were starting to wonder: had their show run its course?

Something had to be done, it was decided. Time to draw a line and move on, as they say. So what next? Brainstorming as only canny creatives can, how about Another 100 Years of Jazz, they cried, falling back into their sun loungers, quite overcome by the sheer audacity of it. And as if to compound the excitement, they added a sub-title: ‘A Complete & Utter History Of Jazz (Almost)’. And so it has come about, with the London debut performance for their new show with this memorable title, scheduled for Chelsea’s mighty Cadogan Hall on Saturday, September 24th.

With a cast of, well, six, and a century’s music to call on, an entirely new programme has been devised, honed and sharpened, the full span of the music somehow compressed into a fast-moving yet seamless set of performances. Once again, there will be a series of rapid adjustments, instruments changing hands with bewildering speed, as these stellar players adjust embouchures, flex fingers afresh, re-focus and move from ragtime to the present day. Let’s sum it up thus: historically fascinating, blissfully informative, visually exciting and rather well played.

Georgina Jackson and Enrico Tomasso in 

A Complete & Utter History Of Jazz (Almost) - Another 100 Years Of Jazz at London's Cadogan Hall

So who are these talented musical chameleons, each apparently adept at mastering conflicting stylistic challenges and what can we expect? Look out for reedman Pete Long as he moves from Larry Shields to Charlie Parker with total aplomb via a side bar on cornet, wonder at trumpeter Enrico Tomasso as he evokes Louis Armstrong and then suggests the presence of the acclaimed soloist Wynton Marsalis pausing only to manipulate the trombone, and then see pianist Nick Dawson segue rewardingly from Lil Hardin-Armstrong to Herbie Hancock before adding a clarinet obligatto or two. Check how bassist Dave Chamberlain becomes Dave Chamberlain banjoist and guitarist, but wait isn’t that him also pounding the snare drum as the band marches in? Then again there’s maestro Richard Pite who wraps a sousaphone around himself, lays it down and picks up a string bass before settling behind the drum kit and giving us his Sonny Greer or his Gene Krupa. And last by no means least, we come to the distaff side and that’s the one-person presence of the multi-talented Georgina Jackson whose trumpet prowess and sheer vocal class is set to be a key feature of the new presentation.

Jackson tells me she first picked up a trumpet at the age of nine and earned her spurs with the Wigan Youth Jazz Orchestra under the benign gaze of Dr Iain Darrington, himself a trumpeter of renown. These days she’s a versatile performer, often glimpsed on the high seas on cruise ships but equally at home in the cloistered surroundings of concert venues and jazz clubs.

“Originally I was just an add-on to the 100 Years show,” she says, but now she’s central to the new show’s intentions. “I’m stretching myself, one minute having to play trumpet in the top register to emulate Dizzy Gillespie and the next, singing a ballad. It’s taking every little bit of my skills. It’s a great challenge. The range is incredible. From Bessie Smith to the days of the big bands. We’re going to do ‘And The Angels Sing’ as my feature so I’ll be covering Ziggy Elman’s famous trumpet solo and then singing Helen Forrest’s vocal. That’s an awful lot of trumpet, you know. Still, with Richard, if you say ‘I really can’t do that’, he just says ‘get on with it’ and you do!”

When I ask what the audience should expect, Georgina says, “They’ll see us having lots of fun on stage but always respecting the music. That’s important. We love each other’s playing and I think audiences can see that too. What’s more, we all get on. In the end, I guess we’re just trying to entertain people.”(pp) 

The Jazz Repertory Company Show Reel

Something Worth making A Noise About