Review: Vivacious arrangements a feature of a great night of 1920s jazz
Imagine a couple of thousand toes and the same number of fingers tapping away and you have an inkling of the effect the music of The Charleston Chasers had on the audience at the Guildhall Theatre on Saturday night.
Imagine a couple of thousand toes and the same number of fingers tapping away and you have an inkling of the effect the music of The Charleston Chasers had on the audience at the Guildhall Theatre on Saturday night.It would have taken a superhuman effort to prevent toes tapping and heads swinging and swaying as the effervescent 1920s' jazz infected all with a particularly pleasant 'feelgood' virus.
From a rumbustious opening of George Gershwin's Swanee to a delightful encore of The Clouds Will Soon Roll By, the pace and quality never wavered. And between those were no fewer than another 25 numbers, some oldies and goodies, one or two less frequently heard, that made a scrumptious sandwich filling.
It was a jolly trot through some of the works of many of the great composers and lyricists of the time – the Gershwins, Kahn, Kern, Carmichael among the most easily remembered – and songs that have stood the test of time, such as Black Bottom, When My Baby Walks Down the Street, Happy Feet, Limehouse Blues, and, of course, The Charleston, which brought the first hour's set to a close and left the audience baying for more ... after time to draw breath.
The 10-strong band – looking dashed smart in dinner dress, evoking a time when performance went hand-in-hand with sartorial elegance - filled the auditorium with sound but always with a careful restriction so that it never battered the senses of a near capacity audience, that was largely of a 'certain age'.
And that sound truly recreated that of the orchestras of the period, with its definitive hi-hat clashing and clip-clops, succulent saxophones and trumpets, and the persistent urging undertone of the sousaphone.
Standing out from among the many mid-tune solos were those of the breathy sax of James Evans in Louisville Lady and Jerome Kern's seductive The Way You Look Tonight, Ruth Ross on trumpet in You're Getting to be a Habit With Me, and Andy Hillier on trombone in a rendition of Carmichael's Lazy Bones which was full of amusing pips, squeaks and sliding growls.
Throughout, ran the undercurrent of lively, vivacious and at times electric arrangements that put a happy new face on to these lovely old tunes.
It was so good to see a band playing this style of music with plenty of younger people in its ranks. So many of the ilk seem to be in their dotage. And in leader Debbie Arthurs, whose singing was perfectly attuned to the music, it has a vibrant champion which should ensure this glorious sound from an era that so emphatically changed the musical world will be continued for future generations to enjoy.
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Weather for Grantham
Friday 03 September 2010
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