UCS Senior Jazz dazzle at LAE
UCS’s Senior Jazz Band today travelled to one of our partner schools to provide an afternoon of jazz and music for the pupils and staff.
The sun was shining in Stratford as UCS’s jazz musicians arrived at the London Academy of Excellence and set up to perform to UCS House there. Our Head of Jazz, Mr Da Silva, expertly punctuated each song in the set with some history of the genre of jazz and contextualised the ways in which the songs had developed and were different to one another.
UCS musicians worked their way through a number of jazz classics including ‘Jive at Five’ by Count Basie and ‘Boplicity’ by Miles Davis. Standout performances were hard to pick given the outstanding quality of the whole band, but Tom Wykes’ stamina on the baritone saxophone can’t be forgotten and neither can the cool synergy of Jonathan Shaw and David Verran on the clarinet.
The performance certainly left an impression on the students and staff of LAE and it was impossible not to notice the infectious involuntary foot-tapping that spread throughout the room. We look forward to continuing working with LAE and our other partner schools to develop music partnerships.
