Our fourth concert with strings for the EFG London Jazz Festival features the music of four great British jazz talents of the 20th century.

In 1963 Tubby Hayes took popular standards such as I Feel Pretty, The Party’s Over and But Beautiful and arranged and recorded them with the intention of convincing BBC Television to commission a late-night show featuring himself centre stage on tenor saxophone and vibraphone alongside his then-girlfriend, the delightful singer Joy Marshall. Despite the arrangements being amongst Tubby’s best work, the BBC turned him down and so this music has never been performed in public until now.

Ronnie Scott’s 1964 album The Night is Scott and You’re So Swingable featured string arrangements on some beautiful ballads by Richard Rodney Bennett and we’ll be performing two of them, What’s New and Once Upon a Summertime. To contrast with the ballads, we’ll be featuring two tour de force performances from the Jazz Couriers – the famous quintet which featured Ronnie alongside Tubby. In these, Simon Spillett will be challenging our conductor Pete Long who will be laying down his baton to do battle on his saxophone.

Acker Bilk is most famous for his composition Stranger on The Shore: the first-ever British record to make it to Number 1 in America. Of course, we had to include this piece as part of our celebration of this great clarinettist and bandleader. Alan Bateman performs for us, miraculously recreating Acker’s beautiful and unique tone.

Finally, our concert will also include songs such as Rodgers and Hart’s Have You Met Miss Jones and Cole Porter’s All of You from the 1956 album Velvet Carpet by pianist George Shearing, another exceptional British musician who also became one of our most successful artistic exports to America.

Once again, we are indebted to Ian Bateman for his transcriptions of these superb arrangements and we do hope you can come and join us at Cadogan Hall to experience this wonderful music played by the fine musicians of the Jazz Repertory Company.