In these two, rare live performances, the first since their sell out 2022 Cadogan Hall concert, the celebrated vocalist Claire Martin, joins forces with the young arranger, Callum Au to breathe new life into jazz standards, performing the music from their celebrated album “Songs & Stories”
Surprisingly, this album is Clare Martin’s first big band recording. Her thrill of working with Callum Au, is clear in every track of jazz standards and American Songbook classics, featuring stunning new arrangements.
Callum has created compelling sensitive, modern big band writing, whilst drawing on extensive style and influences from the definitive peaks of this big band. Genre from past eras.
Audiences can anticipate musical gems, from brilliant composers including:-
Pure Imagination –Leslie Bricusse
Let’s Get Lost – Jimmy McHugh & Frank Loesser
I Get Along Without You Very Well – Hoagy Carmichael
The Folks Who Live On The Hill – Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein
Hello, Young Lovers – Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein
I Concentrate on You – Cole Porter
I Never Went Away – Richard Rodney Bennett
The Night We Called It A Day – Matt Dennis & Tom Adair
Stars Fell On Alabama – Mitchell Parish
You And The Night And The Music – Arthur Schwartz & Howard Dietz
Here is is a gorgeous taster of the wonderful music Claire and Callum have in store for you from their “Songs & Stories” album
Claire Martin, awarded the OBE for her services to jazz, is a much-appreciated international singer, equally at home in sold-out concerts on the big stages, such as the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, with a symphony orchestra, as well as regular appearances at intimate, top jazz clubs including Ronnie Scott’s and The Pheasantry, with her trio.
She has a wealth of major recordings with top musicians and has in the last few years created a successful summer jazz festival at Iford Manor.
Over the past fifteen years, Callum Au has established himself as one of the busiest arrangers and orchestrators in Europe. He has had the privilege of writing music for many international artists, including Quincy Jones, Jamie Cullum, Randy Brecker, and ensembles including the SWR Big Band, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Britten Sinfonia. In 2019, he was commissioned to arrange the big band songs in the Hollywood movie adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Cats’. More recently, he had the pleasure of writing two new arrangements for Michael Bublé’s album ‘Higher’, and conducting the BBC Concert Orchestra in a special episode of ‘Sunday Night Is Music Night’ for BBC Radio 2.
“The remarkable young arranger Callum Au is already a master of the mysterious art of orchestration”
– Dave Gelly – The Guardian.
“Claire Martin can sometime make a lyric sound like thinking aloud: she does it here with “Pure Imagination”, not just quiet but hushed”
– Dave Gelly – The Guardian
“Put Claire and Callum together and the result is what many strive for, but few achieve: popular music that sounds both familiar and new”
– Dave Gelly – The Guardian
“A wonderful opportunity to experience the wonder of song that is Claire Martin, with new and compelling arrangements from the Callum Au Big Band, in the intimate Jazz Club environment that is PizzaExpress Live Dean Street”
– The Hoste of Jazz
Doors at 6.30pm
Music at 8pm.
Tickets £50