Pure dead brilliant is the only possible description of yesterday's Napier Jazz Summer School concert in the Rose Theatre basement.  It's the cheapest of the Jazz Festival gigs and you get a lot for your money.  The 120 seat venue was full, helped admittedly by the presence of the 45 summer school participants.

Ten of those participants were singers.  This is the first time the summer school has catered for singers and they gave a major boost to the concert.  We had five bands playing.  Singers performed in various combinations between the band sets and rounded off the gig singing a vocal version of Take Five as a choir.

The origins of jazz are a bit on the hazy side but it's generally accepted that the first jazz recording dates from 1917.  So to highlight that centenary the repertoire for the week was made up of ten pieces, one from each decade since.  The bands chose a couple each and miraculously there was only one repetition.  The two bands concerned provided interestingly different versions.   

The week itself was good fun, incorporating various group activities as well as the work directed towards preparing the concert pieces.  We had a couple of theory sessions most of which was either just above or far above my head though my eyes were opened to one or two aspects of the fundamental building blocks of the music.

That was doing but I've managed a fair bit of appreciating as well.  Two gigs in particular stand out for me.  One was music by Ellington and the other was music associated with Cannonball Adderley and his band, his greatest hits as it were.

I had to sacrifice a couple of evenings of concert going to meet my Fringe rehearsal commitments but that's life in the culture vulture's cage for you.