So last weekend, I went down to the Colston Hall Opening shindig and worked doing a bit of stewarding for Andy Sheppard's Sax Massive, conducted by Orphy Robinson. My job was to help the lovely lady YolanDa Brown up onto a precarious platform and not drop her beautiful saxophone in the process.
So there I am, passing up some improbably high-heeled shoes to this lady and I'm told She's really famous you know?. I didn't know! We had a laugh anyway. I'm not really up to date with current Jazz stars! Ah well. Her playing is absolutely stunning though, full of vibrance and passion, even in the weird avante-jazz bits.
The actual piece - well, the sound of 200 saxophones meandering around an African Jazz tune and severely atmospheric soloist jousting over sustained chords was really impressive. Orphy seemed to have absolute control over the musicians and of course Andy Sheppard had to finish up with a display of circular breathing that had everybody mesmerised.
After the saxes, there was some aerial stuff from Cirque Bijou with an amazing group of beatboxers, led by world champion beatboxer Bellatrix. They were awesome, very RnB oriented but I guess that's to be expected.
A group of Dohldrummers led the saxophones and audience round the building back into the foyer for the rest of the evening's entertainment, which included a 100 guitar massive! Sadly, Dash had an appointment with a big pie and couldn't stay.
Here's a video of the saxes anyway, there are surprisingly few photos out on the internet, considering the number of photographers who were there!
