... Just as it was The Pasadena Roof Orchestra is successfully re-creating the sound of the dance bands from the twenties and thirties. Michael Dynan reveals all It seems hard to believe that the Pasadena Roof Orchestra has now been in existence for almost 30 years. The orchestra started life as a semi-pro band and played its first gig at a rugby club dance in Essex. The PRO as the orches tra ...

... Newton's law American record executives are often pictured as unromantic souls whose only concern is for the bottom line. Commerce ahead of art, you might say. So it is all the more pleasing to note that Concord, a top jazz label in tne Mates, nas just issued its first all-British release. Below Zero features the saxophonist Alan Barnes with pianist Dave Newton's Trio, and has already ...

... Available for all occasions Drummer Cliff Longhurst, a long-established musician on the London freelance scene, reckons he has a function band with a difference. Whereas most of the larger function bands line up three or four singers, and perhaps eight instrumentalists, Longhurst's outfit features 1 1 musicians, with full brass and sax sec tions, and only one female singer. He has developed ...

... Swing along There is no more fascinating story in popular music than the journey taken by klezmer, the folky style played by the Jewish musicians in Eastern Europe towards the end of the last century, to the teeming tos of New York from 1905 onwards. Nor anything stranger than the kind of early jazz, or at least improvised music, played in the bars and cafes of Odessa around 1 890, largely ...

... Adventures of Mr Toad Huddersfield Rather than make do with the usual Home Counties accented amphibian, director Damian Cruden has quite rightly chosen a north country Mr Toad for the Lawrence Batley's Christmas entertain ment. He is played with great spirit and a rich summer wine voice by Daniel O'Bnen. Much careful thought has gone into this version of The Adventures of Mr Toad. It has ...

... TRICKY FUSION m fusion between early music and modem jazz is not the easiest thing to accomplish. And so it proves in Extempore (Linn CKD 078), in which the Scottish-based vocal quartet the Orlando Consort meets London-based experimental jazz outfit Perfect plants. Jazz fans are not likely to be well versed in the ninth to 14th century polyphony that is the Consorts normal territory as a ...

... SETTLING THE SCORE Listening to That's Entertain ment's CD reissue of Thomas and the King (CDTER 1009), which opened at Her Majesty's in October 1975 and closed about a fortnight later, gives us a chance to re-evaluate the score written by John Williams. And very impressive it is, conjuring up the period in which the musical is set, the reign of Henry II. But I am not surprised that the show ...

... The John Dankworth and Friends album Moon Valley (ABCD 7) is essentially the same unit which backs Dankworth's cabaret and concert dates with his wife Cleo Laine--John Horler on piano, Allan Ganley on drums and Malcolm Creese, whose own AB label has released the CD, on bass. So there is naturally a cohe sion about the album, with its high proportion of original themes, which comes from play ...

... Dancing across the decades Three compilations from Rapper represent the dance music of the twenties, thirties and forties, even if some of the tracks are by stage or screen personalities who originally introduced the songs. Thus, on the Roaring Twenties disc (PAST CD 7845) we get a ludicrously hammy version of Clap Yo' Hands, by the Gershwins, from none other than Claude Hulbert, who ...

... Still a barrel of fun 50 years on What better way to relax in the glorious summer sun than listen to some music? Peter Hepple tunes in RECORDS REVIEW It is a bit of a shock to realise that it is 50 years since Annie Get Your Gun was first seen in London, but TER's double CD (CDTER2 1229) marks the anniversary in style, with one of the current queens of the American musical stage, Judy Kaye, ...

... Drinking in Circles Hampton Wick In his new play, Robert Sherwood has had the intriguing idea of presenting a modern version of the Faust pact in a film noir context-- a case of Christopher Marlowe meets Philip Marlowe, you might say. Unfortunately, the promise of this idea is not fulfilled at the Rose and Crown, either in the quality of the writing or in Grip Theatre's flat, unexciting ...

... Singing Gay's happy tunes The Songs of Noel Gay Flapper PAST CD 7035 The VE anniversary celebrations brought the music of Noel Gay back into prominence, though it would be a mistake to think he wrote only cheerful, knees-up songs. He could write a romantic bal lad as wen, the best instance on this compilation being You've Done Something to My Heart, which Evelyn Lave sings here to Gerakto's ...