Doncaster Jazz Alumni – “50 years” at Sheffield Jazz Membership
(Sheffield Jazz Membership at Crookes Social Membership. 25 February 2024. Assessment by John Quinn)

This live performance felt like a twinning of fiftieth anniversaries: Sheffield Jazz Membership will probably be celebrating its personal birthday in Might (particulars beneath) so it was a pleasant, community-minded gesture to ask Doncaster Jazz Alumni to Sheffield Jazz Membership within the Crookes Social Membership, to assist John Ellis’s organisation rejoice their semi-centennnial as nicely.

Doncaster Jazz Alumni is massive band and are all previous members of Doncaster Youth Jazz Orchestra and now established within the music business as skilled gamers. They’re directed by the founding father of the Doncaster Youth Jazz Affiliation John Ellis MBE who set all of it up again within the Nineteen Seventies, and for whom most of the alumni bought collectively and recorded an album “50 years” to mark the event. (Hyperlink to function/interview beneath).

Sunday’s live performance featured fairly a number of of the tracks from that album, though the core of this system was the music of Bob Florence. John Ellis associated that the Doncaster Youth Jazz Orchestra had carried out with Bob Florence in a live performance within the USA again in 1985 and that Bob Florence’s music had been broadly performed by the band throughout its historical past. Different American massive band writers had been featured as nicely, nevertheless it was additionally attention-grabbing to listen to charts by Al Wooden, Kenny Graham and Allen Ganley, all from this nation, exhibiting our personal, robust massive band and writing traditions.

The primary piece on this system was Bob Florence’s association of “Physique and Soul” which featured pianist Ralph Brown with an entire refrain of the melody unaccompanied up entrance then a solo in a while. This was adopted by Chuck Mangione’s “Kids Of Sanchez” that includes solos by Damian Bell on flugelhorn/trumpet and Sarah Potts on tenor sax.

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The third piece was specifically commissioned for the album and written by Tom Kubis entitled “You Know It Makes Sense”. It’s devoted to John Ellis and the title apparently is certainly one of his catch phrases. The association has a lot of figures in it which can be attribute of Tom Kubis’ writing. Featured soloists had been Ralph Brown, Dan Jones on trombone and Simon Dennis on trumpet. Subsequent got here the primary 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 Wooden. Al began his profession again in 1959 and performs all of the saxophones, trumpet and trombone. He was a member of Maynard Ferguson’s Massive Band again within the Nineteen Seventies. For a few years he additionally taught at Leeds School of Music.

At this level within the live performance Al got here onto the stage to direct the band in three Bob Florence items. The primary was “Carmello’s By The Freeway” which featured Mike King on trumpet and Sarah Potts, then “Inform Your Story” a pleasant Bossa Nova function for Gareth Smith on flugelhorn, and to complete the primary half was “Bebop Charlie” which featured Rob McGrath and Lee Hallam on trombone.

Al Wooden got here again to steer the band for the second set in his personal association of a rousing swinger entitled “Over The Prime”. This featured Sarah Potts. The second Tom Dossett chart “By no means Ending Ending Blues” gave a lot of soloists too quite a few to say an opportunity to take a solo. Subsequent was “Mandeville” by Patrick Williams, a Latin American piece which closely featured the brass, the soloist was Lee Hallam. John Ellis commented that the following piece “Present Me The Approach To Go Dwelling” organized by Sammy Nestico could be the piece that some audiences would recognise. This association featured Gareth Smith and Ralph Brown.

The ultimate Bob Florence piece of the day was “Lonely Carousel” which featured Damian Bell plus some good piano work by Ralph Brown. It was fairly uncommon to listen to the drum function “King’s Cross Climax” written by Kenny Graham initially for the Ted Heath band. Drummer Joe Sykes was heard to good impact on this. The encore of the present was an association by Allen Ganley devoted to the good Victor Feldman entitled “Victor”. This featured Myvanwy Smith on baritone sax, Mike King on flugelhorn and Dan Jones.

A extremely good afternoon of huge band music performed to a giant and enthusiastic viewers. I used to be actually struck by the standard of the ensemble taking part in and the soloists.

Full band itemizing (with due to John Ellis):

LINKS: Bruce Lindsay’s function concerning the “50 Years” album
Particulars /Bookings for 18 Might, the Sheffield Jazz fiftieth anniversary live performance with Emma Rawicz and Tony Kofi