This concert felt like a twinning of fiftieth anniversaries: Sheffield Jazz Club will be celebrating its own birthday in May (details below) so it was a friendly, community-minded gesture to invite Doncaster Jazz Alumni to Sheffield Jazz Club in the Crookes Social Club, to help John Ellis’s organisation celebrate their semi-centennnial as well.
Doncaster Jazz Alumni is big band and are all past members of Doncaster Youth Jazz Orchestra and now established in the music industry as professional players. They are directed by the founder of the Doncaster Youth Jazz Association John Ellis MBE who set it all up back in the 1970s, and for whom many of the alumni got together and recorded an album “50 years” to mark the occasion. (Link to feature/interview below).
Sunday’s concert featured quite a few of the tracks from that album, although the core of the program was the music of Bob Florence. John Ellis related that the Doncaster Youth Jazz Orchestra had performed with Bob Florence in a concert in the USA back in 1985 and that Bob Florence’s music had been widely played by the band during its history. Other American big band writers were featured as well, but it was also interesting to hear charts by Al Wood, Kenny Graham and Allen Ganley, all from this country, showing our own, strong big band and writing traditions.
The first piece on the program was Bob Florence’s arrangement of “Body and Soul” which featured pianist Ralph Brown with a whole chorus of the melody unaccompanied up front then a solo later on. This was followed by Chuck Mangione’s “Children Of Sanchez” featuring solos by Damian Bell on flugelhorn/trumpet and Sarah Potts on tenor sax.
The third piece was specially commissioned for the album and written by Tom Kubis entitled “You Know It Makes Sense”. It’s dedicated to John Ellis and the title apparently is one of his catch phrases. The arrangement has lots of figures in it that are characteristic of Tom Kubis’ writing. Featured soloists were Ralph Brown, Dan Jones on trombone and Simon Dennis on trumpet. Next came the first of two charts by Tom Dossett, “Starscape” and featured Rob McGrath on tenor sax and Jordan Hume on guitar.
The band was co-directed by veteran multi-instrumentalist Al Wood. Al started his career back in 1959 and plays all the saxophones, trumpet and trombone. He was a member of Maynard Ferguson’s Big Band back in the 1970s. For many years he also taught at Leeds College of Music.
At this point in the concert Al came onto the stage to direct the band in three Bob Florence pieces. The first was “Carmello’s By The Freeway” which featured Mike King on trumpet and Sarah Potts, then “Tell Your Story” a nice Bossa Nova feature for Gareth Smith on flugelhorn, and to finish the first half was “Bebop Charlie” which featured Rob McGrath and Lee Hallam on trombone.
Al Wood came back to lead the band for the second set in his own arrangement of a rousing swinger entitled “Over The Top”. This featured Sarah Potts. The second Tom Dossett chart “Never Ending Ending Blues” gave lots of soloists too numerous to mention a chance to take a solo. Next was “Mandeville” by Patrick Williams, a Latin American piece which heavily featured the brass, the soloist was Lee Hallam. John Ellis commented that the next piece “Show Me The Way To Go Home” arranged by Sammy Nestico might be the piece that some audiences would recognise. This arrangement featured Gareth Smith and Ralph Brown.
The final Bob Florence piece of the day was “Lonely Carousel” which featured Damian Bell plus some nice piano work by Ralph Brown. It was quite unusual to hear the drum feature “King’s Cross Climax” written by Kenny Graham originally for the Ted Heath band. Drummer Joe Sykes was heard to good effect on this. The encore of the show was an arrangement by Allen Ganley dedicated to the great Victor Feldman entitled “Victor”. This featured Myvanwy Smith on baritone sax, Mike King on flugelhorn and Dan Jones.
A really good afternoon of big band music played to a big and enthusiastic audience. I was really struck by the quality of the ensemble playing and the soloists.
Full band listing (with thanks to John Ellis):
One Response
Fantastic!! Thanks for a lovely review.