JBGB Events present

The Alan Barnes Octet 'Copperfield'

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Last Show: Sunday 10 th October 2021

PizzaExpress Jazz Club (Soho)

Everyone in music knows Alan Barnes as one of our greatest jazz musicians, winning many awards, playing clarinet, alto & baritone saxophones, both in smaller intimate jazz clubs and on larger concert hall stages with equal creativity, all with charismatic, engaging humour. He is also an outstanding music writer and arranger, with two previous brilliant jazz suites, evoking the wonders of Dickens “Christmas Carol” and Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes”, playing to packed houses in the EFG London Jazz Festival at St James and at Dean Street. Tonight’s concert marks the first public performance of Alan’s latest masterpiece “Copperfield

"Barnes is a true Dickensian. He is a serious reader of the novels. It is a clear blunder of providence that he was born too late to appear in their pages!”

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Like the Dickens classic itself, Alan Barnes’s “Copperfield” has something for everyone. A great night out that is also a treat for the jazz connoisseur; it will delight anyone who loves music or literature – or just being entertained!

This new suite of pieces takes the audience through the characters and scenes of ‘David Copperfield”.  Readings from the original Dickens tell the story, and after each scene eight virtuoso musicians bring the characters and scenes to life, switching audiences from hilarity to pathos with a skill that would have done credit to Dickens himself!

A cheery clarinet plays Copperfield, the lost orphan Little Emily is a lyrical tenor, Mr Dick flies his kite in the personage of a soaring flugelhorn and trombone, Mr Micawber expresses “Something will turn up!”on the piano and Uriah Heep writhes around on the bass clarinet. Just as we see David progress through the trials of his life, so the movements of this suite seem to develop along with him.

The music and readings inspire the full range of Dickens’s imagination and emotion: from loneliness and remorse through to love and then irresistible joy. 

Alan Barnes, playing saxophone, clarinet and bass clarinet, is joined by an outstanding  ensemble of highly awarded British Jazz greats.

Band Line Up

Bruce Adams (trumpet)

Mark Nightingale (trombone)

Robert Fowler (saxophones and clarinet)

Karen Sharp (saxophones and clarinet)

David Newton (piano)

Andy Cleyndert (double bass)

Clark Tracey (drums)