A mid-morning film screening followed by an afternoon concert schedule and an exhilarating evening session, it had been a long, enjoyable Saturday at the Classic Jazz Party. Time for bed? Don't be silly, it's time for the late night jam session!
All seats taken, the beer flowing, crisps being munched (oddly, the Pub and Grill stocks Ready Salted, Ready Salted or Ready Salted), at something like 11:15pm Richard Exall mustered the house band and off they/we went. Exall's frontline partners - Malo Mazurié (trumpet) and Alistair Allan (trombone) - helping to share the load before a shedload of hopefuls got the nod.
Swing That Music set an impossibly high standard, the joint jumpin', top that! Well, with A-listers at every turn - David Boeddinghaus (piano), the French rhythm aces Félix Hunot (banjo, guitar) and Henry Lemaire (string bass) and Londoner Richard Pite swinging like nobody's business behind the traps - the pace didn't flag for so much as a nanosecond. Cia Tomasso singing Drop Me Off in Harlem...were we in a hotel around the corner from West Allotment or in a NYC jazz joint? Superb! Alistair Allan's ballad feature Stardust deservedly won sustained applause. Magical.
Another pint of Guinness, please. And some crisps. Oh, yeah, Ready Salted. Meanwhile, from the jazz stage (more like the floor) Panama tore the place apart. This was thirsty work. Another pint of Guinness, please! The Tenements' John Youngs was in the house, first sitting in on banjo, later string bass. Top man, JY. Graham Hughes ditched his trombone to wrestle with a sousaphone, Rico Tomasso laid down his more familiar trumpet to play trombone - great stuff! Michael McQuaid, on alto sax, later switching to tenor, Jack Calloway blowing clarinet as if there were no tomorrow, Gavin Rice playing drums (the award-winning Rice is a veritable multi-instrumentalist), Harry Evans taking up the string bass, Big Butter and Egg Man and many, many more favourites kept the pot boiling. It was gone 1:00am. Another pint of Guinness and a Pinot Grigio, please! Do you have any crisps? Ready Salted? They'll do. Thanks. West Allotment or NYC, we weren't going anywhere, anytime soon. Russell
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