The National Youth Jazz Orchestra: NYJO -The Blue Note Legacy
Pizza Express Jazz Club, Dean Street, Soho, London
It’s a warm welcome return to Dean Street, after too long an absence, to the wonderful music performances of the brilliant young jazz musicians
that are our National Youth Jazz Orchestra– NYJO, under the leadership of their Head of Music and ace trumpet maestro, Mark Armstrongto playThe 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.
For this July 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 20th 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 (made famous by Doris Day) Harry Warren’s “Lullaby of Broadway” – both recorded on Blue Note by Diane Reeves, and many more.
See NYJO playing "Cool Breeze"
This will be a wonderful opportunity for our audience to enjoy the music of brilliant young musicians who are the stars of tomorrows 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.
