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The band has been in existence for approximately 3 years and was formed after the demise of the very popular 12-17 piece "Ray Thompson Big Band" which played many gigs around the Alnwick area.
It is comprised of eight very capable musicians of varying ages.The seven instruments played are :
The other band member is our female vocalist
Please clink on link for personal information about the band members.
All of the musicians have performed semi professionally/professionally in the Northumbria Area, Tyne and Wear and the Borders or even further afield.
Many of them have played in the pit band for numerous amateur/professional shows in the region and also play in other bands/orchestras.
The band members are :
Ray has played Piano/French horn for many years. He started learning classical piano at the age of 7 and French Horn at 11.
He played Horn in many of the amateur orchestras in the Newcastle Area.
He moved to the Alnwick area some 20 years ago and has played both piano/keyboard and horn for many of the local amateur groups.
He has also directed musical theatre pit bands as Musical Director, for amateur shows such as Grease, 42nd Street, Mack and Mabel and Chicago, in both Alnwick and Berwick on Tweed.He has even done panto!!
He is currently director of the 35 strong Alnwick Playhouse Concert Band.
He is also a piano/keyboard and brass teacher.
He previously ran the 15 piece "Ray Thompson Big Band", sadly now defunct,which has now evolved into "And All That Jazz".
Ray has arranged a lot of the music that the band play.
Susie joined us in August 2008.
George plays alto!!
Gavin plays Tenor Sax.
Gavin started playing the clarinet aged 10 and took up the saxophone at 13. He played with school and area concert bands performing in the Netherlands and in Disneyland Paris and also played orchestrally with the Cleveland Youth orchestra.He played 1st clarinet on their tour of Catalonia.
He studied Music at Ripon College and spent 3 months at the Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands. He specialised in performance, playing jazz clarinet in his final recitals.
Gavin is a member of the Alnwick playhouse concert band and plays for local productions including: Barnum, Mikado and Wonderful Town.
He has supported the Alnwick Choral Society in their recent performance of Puccini's Messa di Gloria.
He has also played for the Newcastle Operatic Society for Fiddler on the Roof, Scrooge and Kiss me Kate in the Theatre Royal, Newcastle.
Ron plays trumpet and flugelhorn
Remo is classically trained and has played many professional classical concerts. He retrained for the commercial music business with help from Rick Taylor (Elton Johns Trombone player).
His first big job was playing keyboards (not trombone!!)with "Saka" who were a support band for Nazareth.He left Saka when they went to tour India.
Then he joined "Jazz Roots" a seven-piece jazz band(on trombone) playing all the standards in many clubs. He also did the Edinburgh Jazz festival a couple of times.
Whilst playing with them he met Ronnie Gillespie (an Edinburgh agent) who got him higher profile gigs with bands such as:
He has done some holiday camp work, (and off season work with Joe Longthorne, and Roger DeCourcy) for Bourne Leisure with the show band Skyline.
He has also done professional shows such as West Side Story, The Black Mikado,and Grease.
His most recent work has been with the United Services Agency in Blackpool playing in the North of England with:
He also plays with his own band "Swing Street" playing jazz standards.
Kirsteen was the only woman in the band till Susie joined us.She plays double bass.
Young Mark is our drummer!!
Created on ... September 23, 2008