Big sounds from boys’ jazz bands
Two Seconds Around Midnight; Palmerston North Boys’ High School Stage Band, Auckland Grammar Big Band, with Rodger Fox, Speirs Centre, September 5. Reviewed by Richard Mays
Two of the best high school jazz bands in New Zealand rattled the Speirs Centre rafters for a small, but appreciative audience.
The Palmerston North Boys’ High stage band, directed by Neville Lauridsen, hosted the Auckland Grammar Big Band, directed by Boys’ High old boy Eddie Hare, for the Speirs Centre concert on Thursday, which followed a Rodger Fox jazz workshop during the day.
Playing a set each before combining for a massed finale under Fox, both bands have members in the NZ Youth Jazz Orchestra and showed off their considerable chops across a variety of tones and styles.
They were among nine school bands awarded gold status at the KBB Music Festival last month, where Grammar also won special awards for jazz improvisation and best performance of a ballad.
That ballad, a Mike Tomaro arrangement of Thelonious Monk’s
Round Midnight, would feature twice during the concert, with both bands including it in their set.
The two renditions showcased virtuoso alto saxophonists, Ben Lerner for Grammar and Liam Peck for Boys’ High, and highlighted the differences in band style, with Boys’ High’s version perhaps the more fluid overall.
The local band impressed with versions of Earth Wind and Fire’s
Sun Goddess, Children of Sanchez by Victor Lopez, Mark Taylor’s Love Beams and the theme from The Incredibles.
Lauridsen surrendered the reins to Peck so the young musician could direct his own neatly articulated arrangement of James Charles’ Womp, Womp, Womp, Yeah, Yeah.
Opening the concert with an eloquent Things Ain’t What They Used To Be, and with a highlight in the quirky rhythms and changing tempos of Snarky Puppy’s Thing of Gold, Grammar introduced vocalist Watson Filikitonga for the second half of its set.
Filikitonga not only unleashed some smooth phrasing during his vocals for Me and Mrs Jones and Lionel Ritchie’s Hello, he also busted out the moves for the Fat Freddy’s Drop number Fish in the Sea,
showing a great sense of fun.
The talent-packed high-powered finale saw Fox directing a combined big band blast of Alan Baylock’s Two Seconds to Midnight.
The full-on hit out accommodated two fine rhythm sections underpinning 26 horns, and shared expressive trombone and sax solos by members of both bands, along with a trademark solo trombone contribution from Fox.
If these guys are the future of Kiwi jazz, the scene looks incredibly bright.