The National Youth Jazz Orchestra:
NYJO
-The Blue Note Legacy

 

At Pizza Express Jazz Club, Dean Street, Soho, London

It’s a warm welcome return to Dean Street, following regular Sunday Lunchtime appearances over the last three years, to the wonderful music performances of the brilliant young jazz musicians 

that are our National Youth Jazz Orchestra
– NYJO, to play The Blue Note Legacy.

 NYJO provides an opportunity for gifted young musicians from around the UK to perform big band jazz in major concert halls, theatres, and on radio and television, and to make recordings, commission new works from British composers and arrangers, and to introduce a love of jazz to as wide an audience as possible, but especially to schoolchildren. 

The performing band is selected by audition and invitation, and has a maximum age of 25. It performs around 40 gigs a year across the UK, the vast majority involving additional inspirational educational workshops for local schoolchildren, in partnership with the local Music Hub. It rehearses every Saturday at Woolwich Works, part of Woolwich's Royal Arsenal Riverside complex. 

 

Here is NYJO in full flow playing the Tadd Dameron classics "Cool Breeze".

For this April 2025 concert NYJO have created the The Blue Note Legacy programme: an opportunity to write and arrange big band scores from the wealth of material created by the greatest jazz record label of the 20^th century.

NYJO will be playing music by Thelonius Monk – including “Round Midnight” and “Well You Needn’t” ; more recent compositions from Herbie Hancock, such as “Maiden Voyage” and “Dolphin Dance”, along with songs including Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark” and Harry Warren’s “Lullaby of Broadway” – both recorded on Blue Note by Diane Reeves, and many more.

This will be a wonderful opportunity for our audience to enjoy the music of brilliant young musicians who are the stars of tomorrow’s jazz scene.

“NYJO has never been conformist, never hewing to one particular line, never known for fawning replications and very deliberately these days, a vehicle for new possibilities” – Jazzwise Magazine.

 

Tickets £38

Doors at Noon

Music at 1pm