The Down for the Count Swing Orchestra will be touring with Swing Into Christmas! until 28 December, bringing its own brand of festive musical cheer to audiences across the UK. Mike Paul-Smith, its musical director, spoke to UK Jazz News about the Orchestra and this year’s programme of songs.
“I started the big band in 2005, my last year at Aylesbury Grammar School. Some of the original musicians are still members,” Mike explained. “We started at weddings and private events, playing swing music, which I’ve always loved. Around 2008 I saw John Wilson on TV, conducting what looked like a big band in the middle of an orchestra. I thought ‘Wow! I really want to do that.’ We started playing for vintage dances, then in clubs such as Ronnie Scott’s. I always had the ambition to form a big band with strings, and in 2019, I thought I’d give it a go. We put on a big show featuring strings, and it grew from there.”
The Swing Orchestra is a busy ensemble and has recently played Cadogan Hall, as Mike explained to UK Jazz News in October. It’s also a continually expanding group: “The first Orchestra had 20 members. We’re up to about 32 members for this tour.”
Mike is the Orchestra’s conductor and its main arranger. “At the start I hadn’t had much experience of arranging for strings, but I’d worked with string sections quite a bit, in musical theatre for example. I grew up playing percussion in orchestras – at the back, not playing much, counting lots of bars rest. I learnt to arrange for strings by listening, by reading classical scores and studying arrangements by people such as Nelson Riddle and Gordon Jenkins.”
The addition of a string section impacted on the Orchestra in two ways: stage setup and musical dynamics. “We experimented with various different stage layouts, and we’ve ended up with the rhythm section in the centre, strings to my left and horns to my right. In lots of ensembles like this, the rhythm section is pushed to the back, but when we put it at the centre it acts as the beating heart of the music, and everybody locks in to the drummer, who basically leads the group. Adding a string section also changes the way big band and jazz musicians play. I tell every new rhythm or horn section player, ‘You can’t play like you’re in a big band.’ If you play with that volume, there’s no chance the strings will be heard to the extent they deserve to be.”
“Over the last 18 months we’ve really focused on dynamics; our horn players have to play so much quieter than they would normally. Arrangers such as Nelson Riddle are very clever: you get big moments in the songs when the horns can blast out, really go for it, but at other times they have to play more quietly. The rewards are fantastic; it sounds so good. I remember hearing Clare Teal speak about seeing Wynton Marsalis with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and she recalled being surprised at how quietly they played. So if Wynton’s doing it, that’s a good enough reason for the rest of us to do so.”
The Orchestra’s usual line-up includes 12 strings (7 violins, 2 violas, 3 cellos), 10 horns, piano, bass, drums, guitar, two percussionists, conductor and four vocalists. “We’ve got five vocalists on the tour, with four performing at each concert. We do like changing the show. We have an unofficial policy that no two shows are the same, so we change vocalists around and that allows us to do different songs each night. It keeps the show fresh.”
Despite the title, the set isn’t exclusively devoted to Christmas songs: “At the start of the tour we aim to get people into the Christmas spirit, but they probably don’t want to hear a whole show of Christmas songs, so about one-third of the 26-28 songs will be seasonal. Closer to Christmas, it will be more like 50:50. We always listen to audience feedback about how many Christmas songs there should be. I know I’ve got it right when the same number of people say there were too many as tell me there weren’t enough.”
“I respectfully suggest there aren’t too many great Christmas songs, but the great ones are really great. We try to use the most beautiful arrangements. For example, we play ‘White Christmas’ at most shows, using a Gordon Jenkins arrangement written for Louis Armstrong to suit his voice. It’s marvellous, really special.”
One-third to half of the arrangements are originals by Mike or Simon Joyner (trumpeter and associate conductor). The rest are classic arrangements. Each vocalist sings lead on a similar number of songs each evening, and adds vocal harmonies to songs such as the Sinatra version of “Let It Snow,” which features “a fantastic, really jazzy, vocal chorus.” There’s also a Christmas Overture, to which Mike has added what he calls “an MGM-style choir. Our vocalists are going to be very busy.”
In January, the Down for the Count All-Stars will be on the road, presenting Swing That Music!. “The All-Stars is our original band, the lineup we perform as when we play venues such as Ronnie Scott’s or Pizza Express. We call it a mini big band: three saxes, two trumpets, piano, bass, drums and two or three vocalists. It’s a really fun, flexible, lineup. You can do a really strong Count Basie kind of set, and you can play some of Louis Armstrong’s repertoire. There are lots of vocals and big solos on numbers like ‘Jumpin’ at the Woodside’.”
The bands have almost completely different sets, with just a few songs in both repertoires: “‘Mr Bojangles’ is always requested, so we do that in both bands. ‘That’s Life’ is another popular request that’s in both sets. Other than that, the All-Stars concentrates on late-30s and early-40s swing music, while the Orchestra repertoire is more focussed on Capitol Studios, mid-50s, early-60s music.”
The Down for the Count Orchestra and All-Stars are growing in popularity, with audience numbers increasing and more young people coming to concerts, especially in larger cities and university towns. 2025 is another busy year: “After the All-Stars tour of Swing That Music!, we have some more Orchestra shows in the summer, then more All-Stars shows, then the Orchestra returns for Christmas.”
The Down for the Count Swing Orchestra’s Swing Into Christmas! begins touring on 17 November in Inverness, and continues until 28 December.
