Swing, jazz, fusion, reggae, orchestral percussion, Vanessa Anne Redd gig

This was a good week for corporate/private events for my 1920s swing band the Swinging Magpies - we've had 3 in a week and have had some good banter and been treated to some tasty food. I also rehearsed with singer Vanessa Anne Redd for her gig tomorrow night to promote her latest album 'Behind The Wall' at Servant Jazz Quarters. This is quite a good challenge to play drums on as it involves trying to emulate a lot of overdubbed percussion sounds from the album. Tomorrow daytime I'm rehearsing the Durufle Requiem playing timpani with the St Bartholomew Academic Festival Orchestra for a concert this coming Monday night.

My reggae band Big Bang Roots also caught up this week to try out some new material, which we're aiming to start gigging early in 2017. Cygnus Flare also had a good rehearsal too, we've written all this crazy difficult-to-play music and are using this time to go back over our compositions to iron out any tough bits (could take a while..) and to explore new soloing possibilities.

I also joined a new jazz/fusion band this week - I'm still not sure if it was an audition or an informal play, but we had a fun time playing together and are now aiming to get some gigs together.. They play some less commonly played jazz and fusion standards which is nice and refreshing so I'm looking forward to playing more with them.

On Tuesday night I had a really fun time at the upstairs Ruby Sings jam session at Ronnie Scott's for a kind of pop/function-band tunes jam session - there was a really great rhythm section in the house band and a lot of fantastic singers there to sit in. I went there for the downstairs jazz jam session and that was fun too, but really glad I popped my head in upstairs as the band were great to play with and the audience were really into it too.. Good vibes all round!