Rico Tomasso (trumpet, vocals); Cia Tomasso (vocals); Martin Wheatley (guitar)
In the early hours of Monday morning (sometime after 3:00am), as the late night jam session drew to a close, the Classic Jazz Party musicians could finally get some shuteye, although three of the musicians would be up and about early to fulfill a lunchtime engagement ten miles up the coast in Blyth.
Yamaha Music School occupies the first floor of an unprepossessing building on Seaforth Street, as the crow (gull, more like) flies, a matter of two hundred metres or so from Blyth Harbour. Once inside, it's striking how well equipped the place is. A Yamaha grand piano, naturally, plus an array of percussion instruments, including marimbas, xylophones and a recently acquired lithophone*.
We were on Seaforth Street to listen to Rico Tomasso (trumpet), Cia Tomasso (vocals) and guitarist Martin Wheatley play together for forty five minutes. Our trio opened with Drop Me Off in Harlem - marvellous! I Gotta a Right to Sing the Blues - marvellous! Fats Waller's I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling, first rate material, performed by three A-listers. Singin' the Blues - marvellous, all of these classic numbers being played in Blyth town centre. You couldn't make it up!
A feature for trumpeter Rico. Introducing the Hot Seven number, Rico talked about Louis Armstrong's mastery of the stop-time chorus, a landmark recording in jazz history. Rico played it. Wow! Martin Wheatley's solo feature, playing entirely acoustically, was, perhaps, an unlikely choice - Debussy's Girl with the Flaxen Hair. A master guitarist is M. Wheatley.
The trio, with Cia singing My Blue Heaven, brought the afternoon almost to a close. And to close, St Louis Blues. It had been three quarters of an hour of unalloyed joy.
* Proprietor Steven Moore was offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to provide a home to a lithophone. A what? Me neither. Off he went to the Lake District to view the instrument (see photo) and, without hesitation, arranged for it to be transported to south east Northumberland. Russell
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