It was a lovely summer’s evening, the skies above the river and reed beds outside Snape Maltings were empty and silent, but inside the concert hall the audience was filling the seats in expectation of a great night of music, devoted to A Portrait of Ella, painted musically by Mike Lovatt’s Brass Pack.
The Brass Pack is a powerhouse of a big band. Huge Band might be a more appropriate term, for this is a 25-piece outfit. It’s led by Lovatt, who prefers to call it an orchestra and who spent most of his time in the trumpet section with occasional forays to the front of the stage to solo or chat, and conducted by arranger Colin Skinner, who shared presentation duties with the leader. The orchestra opened the concert with a few bars of “The Very Thought of You” then followed with short bursts of more songs associated with Ella Fitzgerald, including “Lady Be Good,” “A Tisket, A Tasket” and “Lady is a Tramp.” This collection could be called an overture, or a medley, but Lovatt referred to it as “a kaleidoscope of tunes,” which seems like a much nicer term.
Any portrait of Ella Fitzgerald requires a vocalist, and after an instrumental version of “Let’s Get Together” Louise Clare Marshall walked on stage to take on the job. She began with “Mr Paganini” and followed on with “This Old Man.” The nursery rhyme doesn’t appear anywhere in Ella’s discography, but this was an “imagining” of what it might sound like if Ella had sung it with a big band. It was fun, Marshall and the instrumentalists getting into the swing of this simple rhyme. Next up was the more familiar sound of Jerome Kern’s “Can’t Help Loving That Man of Mine,” its lush arrangement and romantic vocals quite the contrast with the rollicking sound of the previous song.
This was a night devoted to songs associated with Ella Fitzgerald, but her sometime collaborator, Billy May, also influenced the event, not least in the lineup of the Brass Pack, which was inspired by May’s Big Fat Brass album. Like that recording, the Brass Pack features trumpets, trombones, tubas, French horns, percussion, guitar, bass, drums, piano and a harp, but there’s no reed instrument to be heard. May also inspired what Skinner referred to as “comic effects” — my favourite being when the orchestra played a short phrase repeatedly as if a record were stuck, until Skinner held his baton vertically and gave it a shove. The concert’s first half ended with a medley of songs associated with Ella and/or Louis Armstrong, including “Dream a Little Dream” and “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” Marshall sang and Lovatt played, the trumpeter only displaying his vocal talent with an “Ohh, yehhhh” to close “Hello Dolly.”
As the audience returned to their seats the large screen to the rear of the stage, used effectively to display images of Ella and her collaborators, announced “Manhattan.” The orchestra returned and burst into a fast tempo rendition of the song before Marshall re-appeared for Cole Porter’s “Miss Otis Regrets.” This was a night filled with fine performances — too many to mention individually — but this was possibly the finest of the evening, thanks to a stripped-back arrangement that centred on the interplay between Marshall, harpist Geraldine O’Doherty and trombonist Gordon Campbell. Miss Otis regrets that she must turn down a lunch invitation as she is about to be lynched for murdering her lover. Speaking of murder in movies and song, the next number started with the theme from Jaws. The song was “I’m Gonna Go Fishin’,” music by Duke Ellington for the movie Anatomy of a Murder, with lyrics added later by Peggy Lee.
The Brass Pack closed the evening with a selection of George Gershwin numbers, mostly from Porgy and Bess. “Summertime” was the highlight, a restrained but expressive solo from Lovatt coupled with Marshall’s superb vocals. The audience demanded an encore and happily received “The Lady is a Tramp.”
One Response
Fantastic evening with Mike Lovatt and the Brass Pack, at the Maltings Snape. Fabulous arrangements by Colin Skinner and enhanced by Louise Clare Marshall’s vocal solos.