The Saturday night concert in the BBC SSO's Alive With Music weekend sounded, in the publicity, like a lot of fun: the BBC Big Band playing music by the likes of Oasis and Goldfrapp, to be broadcast in Radio 3's Jazz Line Up.
The idea appeared to be to reel in the masses by dangling big-band arrangements of familiar pop tunes in front of their noses – along with the reliable incentive of free tickets.
In terms of getting bums on seats, it worked: indeed, it was the impressive turn-out which alerted one of the band's VIP guests to inquire whether everyone there had been invited. He knew you'd be unlikely to get such an impressive turn-out for a jazz concert if punters had had to shell out.
Given then that this was an audience which probably included a significant proportion of folk just dipping their toes in jazz waters, the choice of music was odd. Julian Arguelles, the tenor saxophonist, was conducting and it turned out to be a programme almost exclusively of his own, densely textured, rather challenging music which is not the most accessible and is often rather sombre. The catatonic body language and deadpan expressions of the band's front line (with the exception of the animated saxophonist Nigel Hitchcock) on the first couple of numbers, including the funereal-sounding You See, My Dear, seemed to contradict the Alive With Music theme of the weekend.
The aforementioned tune was written for Arguelles's partner. Personally, I'd prefer to inspire the passion and excitement of the evening's third number, Astorius – a vivid, colourful and thrilling Spanish-influenced piece. It finally gave everyone a Frankenstein-like jolt of musical energy.
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