Friday, December 24, 2010

The Hedsor Jazz Christmas Party 2010

Wow!

First of all, thank you audience for turning out. It was great to see so many of you there, and I hope we see many more of you again. Thanks to all who got the hall ready beforehand, and thanks to all of you who provided food on the night. And you were a great audience, which allowed us to pay our way and provide an evening of great jazz entertainment.

One of our regular attenders asked me “How are you going to write that up in your blog?” And I think “Wow” is how. “Entertainment” is another good word to describe the evening.

Tracey Mendham can hardly go without a mention. A BIG PERSONALTY lady, who played with a wonderful deep rich tone to her tenor saxophone. She also sang (Let it Snow?After the last week?), and danced, out staged Clive (which takes a lot of doing!), and altogether acted like a female Father Christmas personality in the Ho Ho Ho role!! I know that after the Marlow Jazz Festival, where she first met Clive, she really wanted to come and play our party, and we are indebted to her for her 140 mile round trip to do so.

Max Brittain was another of our star guests. He really is a lovely guitarist, who can swing and excite, and play the musical humorist as well. He lives a lot nearer to us than Tracey, but thanks again Max for supporting our Hedsor Jazz venture.

A special mention for a dep rather than a guest. Malcolm Cliff on keyboards was replacing a very unwell Zane, who was there in the audience but who is clearly unwell. We all wish Zane a speedy recovery. It has already taken too long. Malcolm managed to string so many musical “quotes” together I was asked at the end how we could possibly provide a list of the tunes played for the Performing Rights Society! He added to the attack of the ensemble with true jazz panache.

The regular lads in the band, well, we know they are good. They just proved it again!

We were fortunate that, possibly due to the article in the Maidenhead Advertiser, we had a number of new faces at Hedsor last night. The ones I spoke to were amazed at the level of professionalism and class that we have in our regular band. We have know how good they were for years, I am so glad that others are beginning to find out too.

I’ll just leave you with a few of the photos and say thank you, one and all, performers and fans alike, for your company during the last year, and look forward to seeing you all again in the New Year, with our Hedsor Jazz starting on January 6th.

Happy Christmas to you all.

No comments: