Guildhall Big Band: Kansas City: Last of the Blue Devils
- 7pm
About this event:
- Category:
- Jazz
- Event type:
- Free | In-person
- Admission:
- Free No tickets required
- Location:
- Silk Street Music Hall
Event information
To the two great incubators of the jazz vernacular, New York, and Chicago, we can add a third, Kansas City. From Kansas City, jazz spread over the radio-waves and train tracks right across America to take its place as a national heritage. The ideas that have dominated jazz from before WWII to the present day have been the products of Kansas City and the southwest states: notions of time and instrumental intonation, countermelody, and rhythmic displacement.
The last link in the chain of ideas was from Lester Young to Charlie Parker, who stood night after night in the alleyway behind the Reno Club at Fourth and Cherry streets, silently imitating the fingering on his saxophone as he listened to Lester’s choruses vibrating through the walls of the building where the then obscure Count Basie Orchestra was the house band.
Join Guildhall Big Band and guest narrator, Kevin Le Gendre, for a musical survey of the roots of jazz in Kansas City and the reverberations of the musicians who made a vital contribution to the evolution of the musical form.
Access the free digital programme for this concert here.
Performers
Guildhall Big Band
Matt Skelton director
Kevin Le Gendre narrator
Venue information
Silk Street Theatre, Music Hall and Lecture Recital Room are located in the main Guildhall School building on Silk Street and for Barbican produced events the venue can also be accessed from the Barbican if you exit via the doors next to Barbican Kitchen on Level G.
-
Silk Street
Barbican
EC2Y 8DT
