This is the second night of a 3-day festival commemorating Jelly Roll Morton, who died 75 years ago this weekend, and celebrating how his spirit lives on – but with a very different musical legacy! – in East London today,
“The Grand Union Orchestra has been making great, radical world jazz in the musical melting pot of London’s East End for thirty years.” – Duncan Heining, Jazzwise Magazine
Featuring well-known jazz soloists Claude Deppa, Tony Kofi and Harry Brown, plus steel pan virtuoso Daniel Louis, in a programme steeped in African and Latin rhythms and chants associated with Eleggua and other Yoruba orishas, carried to Latin-America, the Caribbean and the USA through the Slave Trade, with stunning small big-band scores by Tony Haynes, reinterpreting what Morton called ‘the Spanish tinge’.
LINE UP
Claude Deppa (South Africa) – trumpet, African drums
Tony Kofi (Ghana) – alto and baritone saxophones
Harry Brown (England) – trombone
Daniel Louis (St Lucia) – steel pan, Latin percussion
Shanti Paul Jayasinha (Sri Lanka/Scotland) – trumpet, flugelhorn
Louise Elliott (Australia) – tenor saxophone, flute
Gerry Hunt (England) – guitar, soprano saxophone
Andres Lafone (Uruguay) – bass guitar
Paul Clarvis (England) – drums
under the direction of Tony Haynes (piano, trombone) – composer/arranger
“The Grand Union Orchestra has been making great, radical world jazz in the musical melting pot of London’s East End for thirty years.” – Duncan Heining, Jazzwise Magazine
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