Jazz and Cocktails

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:

Festive fun by Jeanie Barton

jeanie — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:30:50 +0000

Here’s an early all singing all dancing Christmas e-card from Jeanie – we hope you enjoy it!

Jeanie and the band can include her original songs at your event on request – check them out at JeanieBarton.com

Our Christmas Repertoire

jeanie — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:27:40 +0000

Its that time of year again and we’re pulling out our seasonal charts for your parties and such – here’s a few classics that we regularly play:

New! Christmas Repertoire!
I’ve got my Love to Keep Me Warm
White Christmas
The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Rocking Around the Christmas Tree
Good King Wenceslas
Jingle Bells
Winter Wonderland

But remember we always learn special requests so you only have to ask…

Happy Christmas Everyone!

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!