Scarborough Jazz Festival - Sunday evening (Sept. 28)

Joe Stilgoe & The Entertainers

Joe Stilgoe (piano, vocals); Lucy-Anne Daniels (vocals); Pete Horsfall (trumpet, vocals); Tom Jarvis (clarinet, tenor sax); Nick Costley-White (guitar); Tom Farmer (double bass, bass guitar, vocals); Luke McCarthy (drums)

Sunday evening, the closing session of the 2025 Scarborough Jazz Festival. First up, Joe Stilgoe took to the stage with one or two notable absentees from his 'Entertainers' - no Emma Smith, no Giacomo Smith and no Joe Webb. 

Pianist Joe Stilgoe presented a fast-moving revue celebrating the jazz club - your jazz club - and its multivarious characters. As we sketched the characters in the mind's eye, Stilgoe's Entertainers played and sang: Stilgoe, Horsfall and Daniels the principal voices, Farmer the enthusiastic backing vocalist. Stilgoe stomped, Jarvis exited the stage to reappear at the back of the hall blowing his liquorice stick. Entertainers? Yes, indeed!

Joe Stilgoe has a knack of connecting with his audience. Whatever the occasion, the foot-stomping, piano-playing entertainer is forever Puttin' on the Ritz.      

                

Simon Spillett Big Band plays Tubby Hayes

Simon Spillett (conductor, tenor sax); Nathan Bray, Mark Armstrong, Steve Fishwick, Tom Dennis, Tom Smith (trumpets); Mark Nightingale, Andy Flaxman, Ian Bateman, Mark Frost (trombones); Pete Long, Alex Garnett, Tom Smith, Robert Fowler, Alan Barnes (reeds); Rob Barron (piano); Alec Dankworth (double bass); Pete Cater (drums)

As the Simon Spillett Big Band assembled on stage for the closing concert at this year's Scarborough Jazz Festival, it was a procession of one A-lister after another taking a seat in an all-star orchestra. As the house lights went down, big band aficionados in the auditorium were in their element. One imagines Simon Spillett, an authority on Tubby Hayes, felt like a kid in a sweet shop. 

From Take Your Partners for the Blues to Bud Powell's Parisian Thoroughfare, the Simon Spillett Big Band laid down a marker: this is one of the great big bands. Alan Barnes, playing baritone sax, featured on Soft and Supple. AB was having a busy old time: festival compere, working musician on several sets, making time for all and sundry, then, to top it off, taking his place in the Simon Spillett Big Band. 

At every turn stellar soloists stepped up to the plate: Mark Armstrong and Steve Fishwick (trumpet), Mark Nightingale (trombone) and in the reeds, special mention of Tom Smith, holding his own in such exalted company. And then there was the rhythm section - Messrs Rob Barron, Alec Dankworth and Pete Cater - none better. And what of Simon Spillett? One suspects it's a dream come true for one of Britain's finest tenor saxophonists to conduct an all-star ensemble of this calibre. Perhaps next time our bandleader will pull rank and stand in the soloist's spotlight for one or two numbers. It had been a marvellous finale to the 2025 Scarborough Jazz Festival. Thanks to Simon Spillett, Mark Gordon (festival director) and all of the many festival volunteers.  Russell