REVIEW: Jazz Stroud

May 27 2017

THE 2nd Jazz Stroud weekend had been going for a day or so when the JP Brass AllStars roared into town on Saturday night, this time wearing their big band hats (and ties and braces – and the MD’s shoes!).

They are a brass band with a difference – traditional instrumentation but very non-traditional repertoire.

With players drawn from some of the top brass bands in the south of England and wales, these guys know how to have fun, while giving their audiences the best night.

Under MD, Paul McLaughlin, the band set their stall out immediately with a high octane version of the Tommy Dorsey classic Opus 1.

Then things took a moving and emotional turn. Having said that the band were there to prove that brass banding wasn’t all about hymns and marches, the MD introduced a hymn.

But this wasn’t just any hymn. This hymn was called Manchester and, as McLaughlin explained, had been specially arranged to raise money for a welfare fund for victims of the Manchester bombing last Monday.

The arrangement is pretty well perfect and the performance had the audience on their feet at the end, with many eyes being wiped during the applause.

It was on with the jazz after that, and what jazz there was as The AllStars took us through music from 1920s onwards.

The flugel horn solo from Mark Yarham in Children of Sanchez was just one of the highlights of the first half, which also included a bit of jazz-fusion with Birdland, Dixieland, featuring the very tight trombone section wandering down Basin Street, some cracking solo trumpet playing from Pete Beck on Sweet Georgia Brown.

The band showed their gentler side too with a beautiful version of the 1939 song, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (the only Gloucestershire reference of the evening, we were assured by the MD).

The first set came to a conclusion with MacArthur Park – just one of the potential places on the musical Monopoly Board suggested as a way for the band to make their first million!

The second half exploded into life with drummer, Ian Evans, driving the band through the Benny Goodman tour de force, Sing Sing Sing.

Our MD and compere explained that, in the ground breaking 1938 Carnegie Hall concert in which this number featured, Goodman had the brilliant Harry James as his lead trumpet.

The AllStars own Phil Storer certainly held his own in his powerful solo but this number really featured every section of the band and they all responded to the challenge, leaving the audience a tad breathless at the end – not least the dancers who had been adding their fancy footwork to the music all evening.

Sing Sing Sing was the highlight of the whole night for this reviewer, although Eric Banks’ arrangement of Autumn Leaves came a very close second.

We only had one vocal in the set.

The MD, clearly feeling he didn’t have enough to do, gave us his rendition of Lady is a Tramp in an arrangement by another of the trumpet players, Barny Bowden.

All too soon the evening was finishing, but not before we were treated to some magic.

The gig was titled Swinging and Dancing with the JP Brass AllStars and they couldn’t really finish without some music from one of the greatest swing bands ever.

Miller Magic didn’t disappoint and brought the set to a very fine conclusion, reaffirming one of the band’s other tasks for the evening. They proved that brass band players really can swing!

The audience hadn’t quite had enough however, and the AllStars were persuaded to give us one more. It’s not often you use the names Benny Goodman and Bjork in the same review but the encore was the Icelandic queen’s Oh So Quiet!

This was a strange choice perhaps, but it worked and certainly finished the night with a smile on everyone’s face.

Review by Charlotte Parker