Royal Marines offer big band night at the New Theatre Royal
from their inaugural concert in October 2022, the newly-revived big band from The Band of HM Royal Marines, The Oceanaires are heading to the Royal Hippodrome Theatre, Eastbourne on Thursday, May 9 and also the New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth on Friday, May 10.
Following the tradition established by the original Oceanairesduringthe1940s,50sand 60s, the band includes instrumentalists and vocalists from across the whole of the Royal Marines band service, promising a wide and varied programme of favourite big band numbers, under the direction of Captain Phil Trudgeon and featuring trumpet player Band Sergeant Mark Upton who led the revival.
As Band Colour Sergeant Mark Phillips, who is the Oceanaires operations manager, explains: “A couple of years ago Mark had the idea to reinvigorate the big band from within the whole Royal Marines band service. He wanted to take all the talent that we had within the service and revive the big band sound. Many years ago, back in the 40s and 50s and 60s, there was a band called the Oceanaires from the Royal Marines band service but over the years it died the death and never restarted. There were a lot of people in the 40s and 50s and as the band numbers reduced I think that kind of music became secondary to the primary music that we do. The banddisappearedbutmarkapproached HQ and started it up again.fromthefirstconceptin about the March or the April it was about six or eight months until we did the first concert in October 2022. It happened pretty quickly. Mark had a very clear idea who he wanted to be in the band.”
Now it's a question of building performance opportunities, ideally stringing a few gigs together in the way that they are doing with Eastbourne and Portsmouth: “We want to be able to play more regularly and developthebandindifferentareas branching out. What we're trying to have is the opportunity to perform around the place with the big band sound. It's very rare that you get big band music performed by military bands now but a lot of the atfresh tractionisthatforaudiencesbig bandmusicisveryeasytorelate to.weplaypredominantlytoan older audience and it is always very popular when we do big band. Back in the 90s the Royal Marine Band Plymouth made a recording of purely big band music. It's one of those genres that people are attracted to. When you're talking about big band and military it's very easy to think of Glenn Miller, and in the last couple of years we have been cultivating our vocalists. We've now got a lot of women and we have got an instrumental category which is primarily vocal.wehavenowgotvocalists on the main site and for these concerts we will have three vocalists, certainly two.
“We have always been known for our ability to perform a lot of different genres. Forthefirstperformancemark knewwhohewantedanditwas likeawho'swhoofthebestplayers from the band service but since then he has brought in a development programme. We'vegotpeoplethataredevelopingtheirbigbandandimprovisational skills so that they can fillthegapsinthefutureasthey progress. We want to have longevity by developing these new players.”