Jazz and Cocktails » Our Adventures

Christmas gigs and Rotary Club Ladies Night

jeanie — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 14:11:08 +0000

Sorry for not posting recently – I hope you all enjoyed an indulgent Christmas and New Year? We had some great outings including playing a private party at a gentleman’s house in Dunmow in Essex where it seemed pretty much all the the men were dressed as Santa Claus, however a lady dressed as a cracker won our vote for best fancy dress… The host owned an airline apparently (as you do), you can imagine it was a fine location.

We also were busy promoting Jeanie’s Christmas Song which had plenty of airplay thankfully along with some great gigs at prestigious venues like the Spice of Life in Soho and the National Theatre on London’s South Bank. You can read about it all and watch videos of the shows here.

Last Friday we had a lovely outing to play at a function in Lichfield, Staffordshire for the Rotary Club’s Ladies Night; it was in the stunning George Hotel and was a real knees up – a guest just sent these pictures of us (Jeanie Barton voice and percussion, Paul Weinreb on piano and Selwyn Charles on double bass) as you can see there was plenty of dancing!

The RAF Take the A Train and the biplane!

jeanie — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:21:40 +0000

We had a great little outing last Thursday to the Swindon Steam Museum where Paul Weinreb, Olly Blanchflower and myself (Jeanie Barton) played a function for the RAF. As a trio (Paul on piano, Olly on double bass and me warbling) we played two one hour sets; the first of which was probably our most unusual location yet – a full sized indoor steam train platform – of course the obvious song Take the A Train had to complete that set.

We then carried our kit through to the next room – a big event hall which was laid out beautifully by the organiser Planet Pursuits Event Management who had even brought in a classic biplane earlier that morning to complete the look. I think you can see we had some fun and so did the RAF, we were particularly chuffed (excuse the pun) by the compliments paid to us by many of the American guests as we were after all playing their music…

x J&C

Come fly with me!

jeanie — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:41:45 +0000

Well, it will be a while before I get on a plane again because (should you not have been following us on twitter) we’ve just done the mammoth round the world Australia trip. Pretty much as far as you can go without coming back… So I’ll attempt to take you there with the aid of this nifty little video I put together to commemorate the purpose of our visit – our good friend Diane Stewart’s wedding to Simon Mitchell:

Back soon to take you on a ‘Slow Boat to China’! x J&C

Up north again; this time in West Bromwich

jeanie — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:23:38 +0000

Lakis, Chris and I had a wet and slippery trip up the M1 yesterday to play again at West Bromwich’s Arts Centre – a big pink place called ‘The Public‘. It was a long day but we were made very welcome by both audience and staff, they really are fabulous warm folk. I had some family come too which was lovely; my mum lives quite near there in Nottingham and she bought my Auntie Jean (yes, I am named after her) and also my Uncle Stewart and Auntie Anne who were over visiting from Australia…

Chris noticed there was a photography studio set up next to the entrance doing free portraits so we got our pic taken for a laugh – Lakis kept saying, “How does my hair look – does it look ok?!” I told him he looked beautiful.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps?

Here’s a clip of us swinging on the stage:

And doing a touch of the Big Brovaz:

Sinatra in their Eyes

admin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:38:13 +0000

We just got back from a really nice function up in the Harrogate International Centre. It was an awards dinner for ‘Iheem’ the Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Estate Management, which was really quite a classy event.

Along with myself (Jeanie), pianist Paul Weinreb and drummer Cripsin Taylor piled themselves and their kit into my motor and we shared the driving – all 5 hours there and back! Still we didn’t want to be stuck in traffic sweating out of our faces so thankfully we gave ourselves more than 6 hours to do it in. The fantastic Selwyn Charles joined us on double bass as he has a head start on us, being based in Northhampton.

Here’s a shot of the awards poduim:

Harrogate International Centre Queen's Conference Hall

We were based in the back right hand corner of the hall; Paul and I played a duo set as guests arrived and then later as a quartet we did 3 sets after the speeches, during the dinner…

This was the view from where we played:

All the diners we played to...

What we especially loved was the ‘Stars in their Eyes’ style twinkly black out cloth surrounding most of the room – below you can see us swinging ‘Fly me to the Moon’ the Sinatra classic, which seemed very appropriate for the setting:

This video is also now on our videos page.

Well, we had a great blow and everyone seemed to enjoy the evening… We finished ‘around midnight’ (haha) – happily the client had arranged for us to stay in the Holiday Inn which was just next to the centre, so we packed up all our kit and scuttled off back down the goods lift to curl up for a well needed rest.

We woke to a glorious sunny morning – looking out from the 9th floor of the hotel was quite lovely:

an Autumn morn in Harrogate

It certainly was pretty, and a nice change from north london. We had a slap up breakfast and then got back on the road.

Thanks to all at Iheem, The Harrogate International Centre and the Holiday Inn for looking after us so well – I hope we can come north again soon!