Music / festival
Review: Bruce-Ilett Big Band, Colston Hall
If anybody ever doubted that Bristol was a great place for a jazz festival the sight of the Colston Hall foyer filling from early evening should have reassured them. With a free programme of the best local music the ground floor was rammed and the stairwells lined up to the second floor.
Now in its third year it seems the event has generated a solid audience and the mood of anticipation was palpable, not least among the many stylishly clad retro-swing dancers adjusting their vintage glad rags for the big band event in the main hall. There was a ‘basics’ dance step lesson to warm them up before the band appeared, a genuine all-star line-up of the very best local jazz talent, with Andy Sheppard taking his seat in the sax line-up and trumpeter Jonny Bruce’s white tuxedo out front.
The repertoire stuck honourably to the mood of the event: strictly 40s and 50s swing charts for tunes like Sleepy Lagoon, Midnight Patrol and Cherokee with vocal contributions from Katya Gorrie including I’ve Heard That Song Before and guitarist Denny Ilett overdoing ol’ Blue Eyes’ louche version of I’ve Got You Under My Skin to perfection.
This band is about as long-established as the festival and there’s no doubt it has tightened up into something formidable: a Bristol resource that could/should get national recognition both for its collective discipline and the quality of the solo playing. The tight power of their Basie-arranged April In Paris gets everything there is out of the music, punchy horns assuaged by smoochy reeds while Jonny Bruce’s channelling of Harry James for numbers like James Session has exactly the brash swagger that made both trumpeters noteworthy.
At one high point Sheppard contributed an elegiac solo that was a master of economy, at another there was a five trumpet face-off that had no losers – such was the assurance of all the players. The crucial thing was that the packed dance floor never stopped bouncing to this quality jazz – another retro throwback that was actually very present tense indeed.
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