Upcoming Gigs

On Friday I had the pleasure of watching Tim Garland take on the classical audience with Bach's Concerto for Oboe ( which is always a risk doing it on Soprano Sax), his own newly commissioned homage to Bach and some of his Lighthouse Trio's pieces. The trio were joined by the Sacconi strings who had expanded to a 9 piece group for the occasion.
I can normally be assured of a great evening when I go and see the Lighthouse Trio and their new music is even more awesome than the last album. This evening, however, was something else!
I brought along with me a clan of family members and friends who had been convinced enough by my excited chatter about this gig to trawl up to London. The audience didn't feel like a normal jazz audience (and they certainly didn't respond like a jazz audience!) so I presume there were quite a lot of classical music fans there who came because of the festival or because they liked the concept.
Things got off to a very "interesting" start... after about 3 mins of playing there was a strange yowling over the PA system and someone chatting away! Obviously the musicians had to stop whilst the organisers worked out where the noise was coming from. After this was sorted, things got properly underway with the Bach piece, which went down really well with the audience. Then came Tim's piece. I don't think it was what the audience was expecting but the response was brilliant and I was very proud. There was a buzz in the audience in the interval and I checked with the clan they were enjoying it as much as I was. Opinion was split between the more conservative who preferred the Bach and the more musically inclined who preferred Tim's piece, however the overall impression was very positive.
The second half started with just the trio playing some of the tunes from the last album and some new pieces, after which they were joined by the strings for some more Lighthouse Trio treats. Although I felt the acoustics in the hall didn't do Asaf's percussion justice I thought it was a brilliant performance. Even Gwilym cutting his finger and potentially ruining an extremely expensive piano couldn't dampen the mood. It was truly a gig that reminded me why I do my job! And I left the gig with some newly-minted Garland fans who were completely blown away. Jazz, classical, who cares! It was just brilliant music.