Jazz breaking news: Andrew Plummer takes cutting edge school jazz-rock band to the next level
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Singer and bandleader Andrew Plummer, best known for his snarling Tom Waits style vocals with the likes of World Sanguine Report, Bilbao Syndrome and Fringe Magnetic, is spearheading a radical prog-jazz school band project featuring a group of talented 11-16 year olds from Tottenham, north London.
Named Rhythm Sticks (pictured left), the band features students from Park View School, a mixed comprehensive secondary school in the borough of Haringey, one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the UK, all playing adventurous progressive jazz-rock originals developed with Plummer and drummer Tom Greenhalgh over the last five years. The radical sound is matched in its creativity by a remarkable level of confidence among the musicians, all greeted with wild applause from their fellow students as seen on their YouTube live video from a school concert (see video below). It’s a bold ripost to the dull ubiquity of identikit post-X Factor style karaoke singing, as the band performs incredibly mature and engaging original music with a serious edge.
Entering the 2012 Music-For-Youth Festival, which enabled them to perform at various venues around the country, the group won two awards, and they’ve since decided to step things up a gear launching a Kickstarter crowd-sourcing project to raise funds for a professionally produced album pressed on to 1,000 CDs. Having generated a buzz online the band are already on target to have enough to record the album, and they plan to use any further funds to help pay for a five date UK tour in August 2014, and an album launch gig at a high profile London venue – the closing date for the Kickstarter campaign is 28 May.
Plummer, who leads the band on guitar, commented on the quality and high level of this project: “Even as a bandleader with other professional bands, this is truly one of the most exciting things I do!” The project also echoes some of the pioneering work late great British trumpeter Ian Carr did with his jazz workshop at the Interchange Arts Scheme, which helped mentor the likes of the Mondesir Brothers, Dave Okumu and Finn Peters – inspiring a young generation of musicians to experiment, improvise and embrace music from a wide range of sources, perform live and take risks musically.
– Mike Flynn
For more info and to back the Kickstarter campaign go to www.rhythmsticks.org