Jazz Big Bands set for BBC Proms Battle Royal with Gregory Porter and Clare Teal
Thursday, August 7, 2014
This year’s BBC Proms will be celebrating the hard-swinging jazz of the 1930s and 1940s at the Royal Albert Hall with a Battle of the Big Bands as part of a special Late Night Prom this Friday 8 August.
The concert pays homage to the legendary face-offs held at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom in the late 1930s, where the big bands of Count Basie and Benny Goodman would try to outdo each other with killer tunes and powerful arrangements.
Now, 80 years later, two specially commissioned big bands will be going head to head in a similar Battle of the Bands, with the Count Pearson Prom Band led by James Pearson, the house pianist at Ronnie Scott’s, versus the Duke Windsor Prom Band, led by Australian pianist, composer and arranger Grant Windsor. While both pianists are in-demand sidemen and solo artists, they have also worked extensively on their big band projects, with Windsor’s Broken Big Band and Pearson’s upcoming collaboration with his trio and the Skelton/Skinner All Star Big Band to perform the music of Oscar Peterson.
This jazz Prom will also feature a guest appearance by Grammy Award-winning jazz vocalist Gregory Porter, as well as acclaimed British jazz singer and Radio 2 broadcaster Clare Teal, who has previously performed with both Windsor and Porter. She will also compère the concert, and has commented “it will be a ‘Battle Royal’ with the duel-off at the end… if you haven’t heard a big band going full throttle, the sound is extraordinary”. The concert begins at 10.15pm at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday, and will be broadcast live on Radio 3, while a recording of the event will be shown on BBC4 on 17 August.
– Bethany Roberts
For more information visit www.bbc.co.uk/proms/