Mumbles Mostly Jazz and Blues Festival

NYJO National Youth Jazz Orchestra

A glittering showcase for the country’s best young musicians…

Where: Festival Pavilion
When: Sunday 3rd May
Time: support act Hard Bop Quintet’s set will start at 8pm, followed by the NYJO; concert ends at 11pm

Headlining on the jazz side of the 2009 Admiral Mumbles Mostly Jazz and Blues festival, NYJO is well known throughout the world. During the orchestra’s long history since 1965, most of the rising generation of jazz musicians have passed through its ranks, often becoming established jazz stars while still playing with NYJO. One of NYJO’s aims is to share the talents of these exciting young players with as wide an audience as possible.

Under its founding Musical Director, Bill Ashton MBE, NYJO has performed many hundreds of concerts all over Britain, from Ronnie Scott’s, the Barbican, the Symphony Hall Birmingham, the Usher Hall Edinburgh, the Royal Albert Hall and Royal Festival Hall in London, to theatres, clubs and schools. It has made numerous television and radio programmes, recorded around 40 albums, and visited most European countries as well as the USA, Australia and New Zealand.

Most of NYJO’s music is written specially for the orchestra by British composers, often past and present members of NYJO. The available repertoire is enormous and covers a wide variety of styles.

At the other end of the scale, NYJO is recognised as a world-class jazz orchestra and regularly tops the bill at festivals. As John Dankworth says: “Forget the word ‘Youth’, this is one of the best bands you will ever hear” – and if proof were needed, in July 2002 NYJO was voted Best Big Band for the fourth time in the British Jazz Awards by both the critics and the general public. Founder and Musical Director Bill Ashton also received the BBC Radio 2 Jazz Award in 1995 for his Services to Jazz, as well as receiving the All Party Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group’s Special Award in 2007.

NYJO have commissioned a special arrangement of the Clark Terry piece ‘Mumbles’, which will be played for the first time at the festival.