Pianist Chris Dann with Ralph Sims (drums) and Berndt Reiss (double bass).
Pianist Chris Dann with Ralph Sims (drums) and Berndt Reiss (double bass).
Jazz fans are in for a treat this weekend with songs that once hogged radio airwaves.
One of New Zealand’s leading jazz pianists, Chris Dann, is teaming up with Ralph Sims (drums), Berndt Reiss (double bass) and local choir Renaissance Singers for a concert in achurch.
The concert is called Sing and Swing and saw the jazz trio work with Renaissance Singers musical director Christine Archer-Lockwood on a programme that promises music made famous by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald.
Think Fly Me to the Moon, Autumn Leaves, Come Fly with Me, The Girl from Ipanema and I Got Rhythm.
Pianist Chris Dann with Ralph Sims (drums) and Berndt Reiss (double bass).
Archer-Lockwood said whether Dann was working with classical or jazz soloists, he had an innate knack of supporting the artists with something musically beautiful that is not necessarily the scripted notation.
She said Dann had written accompaniments where needed and modified others.
“With Ralph Sims on drums and Berndt Reiss on bass the jazz trio provide the sound that would be so familiar to those who listened to jazz standards in the middle of last century – and who didn’t?” she said.
Some of those famous songs were constantly being reprised by numerous jazz performers and filled the airways in the days of radio request sessions, or played by orchestras that had their own choirs or singers on hand such as Percy Faith and Mantovani, she said.
Archer-Lockwood said The Chris Dann Trio and the Renaissance Singers recently played at the Manawatū Jazz Club and the audience loved it.
“The choir demonstrated its class with clear diction, great timing and beautiful harmonies that really stood out when the choir sang a piece unaccompanied,” she said.
The Renaissance Singers are joining the Chris Dann Trio for a concert in Palmerston North.
“The soloists who emerged from the choir together with Daniel Hodgetts on trombone, sounded truly professional. Daniel’s little interplay with Chris on piano was sheer jazz fun.”
Hodgetts, along with Bronte Tong, sang in the New Zealand National Youth Choir and were recipients of a Renaissance Singers Young Person’s Scholarship.
Bronte Tong.
The choir and trio also performed Chilcott’s A Little Jazz Mass, a short piece of five mass parts sung in Latin familiar to those who know the mass, and would also please the ears of jazz aficionados
“The match of trio with the choir was seemingly effortless, the result of a number of rehearsals where pieces were scrutinised and altered to create the lingering feel that one gets when listening to musicians really in sync with each other,” she said.
She was full of praise for the trio of jazz musicians and a choir that were all from Manawatū.
“Chris has this knack of accompanying while adding to the overall experience as if instruments and voices are producing music that seems to be made for each other,” she said.
“Ralph Sims on drums has an array of technical skills with brushes and sticks and pedals that is just always there, seamlessly adding to the mix and the double bass of Berndt Reiss provides a secure backbone.”
WHO: Sing and Swing - Chriss Dann Trio and the Renaissance singers
