With a capacity audience and musicians from the local circuit, trumpeter and composer Nick Dewhurst and the Lichfield Jazz Big Band provided an evening of festive fun and musical fireworks.
A wide selection of classic Christmas carols and seasonal pop songs were given breezy jazz arrangements, which featured different moods and some sharp ensemble brass and woodwind playing.
With more than 15 musicians, the arrangements were at times complicated but always accessible, with well known songs such as Jingle Bells and Santa Claus is Coming to Town mixing in with a reworked Away in a Manger – the time signature of the arrangement taking it far from the original we are all familiar with.
A gospel infused This Little Light of Mine was a song of joyful uplift featuring some fine soloing throughout.
In The Bleak Midwinter started off as composer Gustav Holst may have intended, but by the second verse it had taken on a new direction.
Wham’s Last Christmas was delivered as a bass guitar solo, while Silent Night was also given a shiny new coat.
In the second half other songs such as Hark the Herald Sing were well played, although the Reggae version of Deck The Halls may not have been to every audience’s members taste.
I Saw Three Ships had three different movements, a Middle Eastern flavour, and then it was given a celtic treatment before the all out aural assualt that finished the piece.
This was a bit different to the usual evening of festive music, but it was a fine way in which to start the Christmas season.
