Does New Orleans jazz belong in church? This is an opportunity to hear traditional jazz in a gospel concert setting!

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This band celebrates the great New Orleans clarinettist George Lewis with music inspired by his album “Jazz at Vespers” recorded in the 1950s at the episcopal church in Oxford, Ohio. His band was the leading traditional jazz revivalist band at the time, comprising veterans who had all been in on the birth of the music, focusing on the spirituals and hymns that had been part of jazz from the start.

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This band, led by BBC Radio 3’s Alyn Shipton, and featuring clarinettist Adrian Cox, comprises musicians who have all spent time in New Orleans learning from the founding fathers of the music. In this concert they will re-explore the repertoire that Lewis made famous, from lesser known pieces such as “Sometimes My Burden Is Hard To Bear” to old favourites like “Down By The Riverside” and “Lord, Lord, Lord, You Surely Been Good To Me”. And just like the Lewis band of the ’50s, Alyn’s jazz friends normally play entirely acoustically without amplification. The music runs the full emotional range from soft, contemplative pieces to joyous outpourings of the infectious rhythms of the Crescent City.

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Adrian Cox, Clarinet; Simon Picton, guitar and banjo; Richard Simmons, piano; Alyn Shipton, bass and Emile Martyn, drums.

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