September/October ’09

September has turned into an unexpectedly busy month for Bryan Davis. He is now making two trips to Austria in between September 9th and early October. Firstly, he will be performing and recording with Thomas Gansch and his band; Gansch and Roses. They play at Musikverein Ötscherland, in Frankenfels, Lower Austria on September 11th. Then Thomas is taking the band into the studio to record his new CD. More information on that when we have it. Finally, on September 15th, they perform at the wonderul Porgy & Bess Jazz Club in Vienna. During the recording and at Porgy, Thomas has invited a special guest to join the band. The trumpet section will be augmented by the great Adam Rapa! This promises to be a great gig and tickets are already selling fast.

On September 26th, Bryan Davis will be returning to Austria once again; this time to play the 1st leg of the LACJO Autumn Tour. It was previously expected that Bryan would have emigrated by this late in the year and consequently he arranged for his friend and colleague Roger Ingram to play the tour in his place. Unfortunately, Roger has been required to fulfil some promotional commitments with Harry Connick Jr, at short notice, and is unable to make it to Austria on this occasion. Luckily, due to the delays in his move, Bryan is able to play the concerts after all. The Austrian dates on the tour are as follows:

  • 27/9/2009 – Festspielhaus, Bregenz
  • 28/9/2009 – Ursulinensaal, Innsbruck
  • 29/9/2009 – Stockingers Festsaal, Ansfelden
  • 30/9/2009 – Stockwerkjazz, Graz
  • 4/10/2009 – Altes Theater, Weitra
  • 5.10.2009 – Porgy & Bess, Wien

All concerts are scheduled to start at 8pm. There is also a tour to Shanghai, China, later in October. Roger Ingram will be playing these dates, as previously planned.

During both of these tours, as well as when he’s back in the UK in between, Bryan is available to teach private trumpet lessons and workshops. In addition to the dates listed above, he will also be staying in Vienna on September 16th and October 1st-3rd. If you would like to organise a lesson, please email Bryan to set it up. If you are not in the same part of the world as Bryan, please be aware that Online Lessons via Webcam are also available!

In addition to his touring activities, Bryan’s emigration to New York is now continuing apace. He will (finally) be making the move immediately after the LACJO tour, probably on October 8th. Providing the authorities grant him permission(!) he hopes to be playing the Rat Pack Christmas dates in Dallas, TX and Hartford, CT in December. More information about that in due course.

August/September ’09

Bryan Davis is still UK-based during August and early September. He is available to teach lessons and workshops, as well as for gigs of any kind. If you are based elsewhere in the UK, or indeed the world, but are interested in taking a lesson with Bryan, please be aware that Online Lessons via Webcam are also available. It seems likely now that Bryan will, finally, be making his move to New York in mid-September. That will be confirmed soon.

Following a quiet beginning to August, Bryan is having a busy time at the end of the month. Along with the usual wedding gigs and other private events, he will also be performing with the Real Macaws on a few of their summer dates; they are playing at an event in Springfield Park, Darlington on the 23rd, and are in Whitby, N.Yorkshire and just outside of Manchester on the 30th and 31st respectively. Following the event in Darlington, Bryan will making a mad dash to Rhyl to play with the Nick Ross Orchestra that evening. Full details of his movements are in the Calendar.

Looking ahead to September, Bryan will be playing for the last time at The Swan, in Liversedge, at their regular Wednesday night Jazz gig. He will be joining the Brian Jackson Trio and other guests on 2nd of September. Bryan had a tremendous gig there this month, as mentioned in a recent news item, with Stuart McDonald (saxes) and special guest Russell Van den Burgh sitting in on Tenor sax. Lots of fun!

Bryan Davis will be visiting Austria to perform and record with his good friend Thomas Gansch. “Gansch & Roses” will be performing in Frankelfels, in Lower Austria, on September 11th. Following 3 days in the studio, they will be playing at the fabulous Porgy & Bess club in Vienna on the 15th. Some lesson times will be available while Bryan is in Austria; he will most likely come over a couple of days early to visit friends in Vienna so there will be more opportunities than usual! Please contact Bryan if you are interested in scheduling a lesson and we’ll set it up.

Later in September, and during October, the Lower Austria Concert Jazz Orchestra are touring again, in Austria and China! On this occasion, Bryan will be unable to perform with them due to his emigration. Instead, Roger Ingram will playing Lead Trumpet with the band. Apologies to the LACJO musicians and audience. Bryan intends to resume playing with the band in 2010 – the provisional tour dates for September 2010 are already in his diary!

The live LACJO recording from the first gig in St Polten in September ‘08 is apparently mixed, mastered and ready to go! We hope to add details of that CD to Bryan’s discography very soon!

Other recent highlights included Stephen Triffitt‘s Frank Sinatra Tribute in Amsterdam, the Wigan Jazz Club Big Band’s concert closing the Wigan Jazz Festival 2009 and Ryan Quigley‘s Maynard Ferguson Tribute in Glasgow.

The Store page is now up and running on the website. There are prepayment links for lessons and .pdf files of Trumpet exercises. There are also links to various external retailers (Amazon, iTunes etc) to purchase CDs and DVDs featuring Bryan Davis. If you have any requests for merchandise you’d like to see added to the Store, please contact Bryan and let him know!

July/August ’09

Bryan Davis is still UK-based during August. He is available to teach lessons and workshops, as well as for gigs of any kind. If you are based elsewhere in the UK, or indeed the world, but are interested in taking a lesson with Bryan, please be aware that Online Lessons via Webcam are also available.

Bryan will be taking a trip up to Glasgow on Friday, 31st July to perform with the Ryan Quigley Big Band at their Maynard Ferguson Tribute. The gig takes place at The (Renfrew) Ferry, 25 Anderston Quay, Glasgow from 8pm. There is a news item with more details.

During August, Bryan is mostly playing for private events; as is typical during the summer months in the UK. He will also be playing a couple of dates with The Real Macaws; wandering around in town centres as they tend to! His principal activity will be finalising the sale of his house and getting ready to move to New York in mid-September!

Looking forward to September, Bryan will be visiting Austria to perform and record with his good friend Thomas Gansch. “Gansch & Roses” will be performing in Frankelfels, in Lower Austria, on September 11th. Following 3 days in the studio, they will be playing at the fabulous Porgy & Bess club in Vienna on the 15th. Some lesson times will be available while Bryan is in Austria; he will most likely come over a couple of days early to visit friends in Vienna so there will be more opportunities than usual! Please contact Bryan if you are interested in scheduling a lesson and we’ll set it up.

Later in September, and during October, the Lower Austria Concert Jazz Orchestra are touring again, in Austria and China! On this occasion, Bryan will be unable to perform with them due to his emigration. Instead, Roger Ingram will playing Lead Trumpet with the band. Apologies to the LACJO musicians and audience. Bryan intends to resume playing with the band in 2010.

The live LACJO recording from the first gig in St Polten in September ’08 is apparently mixed, mastered and ready to go! We hope to add details of that CD to Bryan’s discography very soon!

During July, Bryan had a great trip to Amsterdam, playing Lead Trumpet for Stephen Triffitt in his “Tribute to Frank Sinatra”. The local musicians, who made up the bulk of the band, did a tremendous job and the concert was a great success. Another notable gig was the Wigan Jazz Club Big Band’s concert on the final night of the Wigan Jazz Festival. In a double bill with singer Carol Kidd, the band closed the festival with a great set of music from the Stan Kenton library. The concert was a sell-out and the large audience were treated to some fantastic playing from a great band!

AneelSoomary.com

Partners in Crime.I just spotted that a dear friend of mine has his website up and running. Aneel Soomary is a terrific Trumpet player who is based in Vienna, Austria. I first met him a few years ago when touring there with the Rat Pack. Much more recently we’ve been section-mates in the Lower Austrian Concert Jazz Orchestra – a gig I was offered at Aneel’s suggestion! If you’re touring in Austria and are short a trumpet player, I can’t recommend him more strongly – no matter what the style of music you happen to be playing. It’s an education for me to work alongside him.

Please check out the website and get to know this marvellous musician for yourself.

Catching Up…

It’s been a busy few weeks, during which I’ve had little time to write or record anything for the site. This post may be some small consolation for you blog readers out there; a new podcast episode will be recorded next week, which I hope will appease my listeners who, judging by the amount of feedback I’ve received about episode 1, are a surprisingly large number!

Since last I blogged, I’ve completed the LACJO Spring Tour and also the last leg of the Rat Pack US National Tour. Both were tremendous experiences. I’ll give a more thorough account of the last 3 weeks of the Rat Pack tour in my next post.

The tour with the LACJO was great fun. It was slightly marred by some technical issues but ultimately the band really gelled and made a great job of some challenging music. My thanks go to all involved for their tremendous musicianship and their patience with my lousy German. I don’t know how many of you reading have ever been in a situation where you speak the minority language but it can be incredibly frustrating; particularly when you can see the clearest route to the resolution of a problem but can’t successfully articulate it. Unfortunately there were moments where this frustration led to anger – not something I’m proud of. I hope, as it seemed, that the rest of the band considered my playing to be of a sufficient standard that they could forgive my mood swings. I’ll be learning more German before my next visit!

Unfortunately, due to my impending immigration to the USA, I will probably be unable to join the band for the next tour(s) in the Autumn. Once in the USA, I have to wait until my residence is finally processed before I can leave again. Since this is likely to take up to a year, and I’m planning to move in July, that means that a September/October tour is sadly out of the question. I just hope that whoever takes my place doesn’t do too good a job – I’d very much like to rejoin in 2010!

Meantime, we should have news about the LACJO CD which was recorded at the ‘Premiere’ concert in St. Poelten in September 2008. Early mixes sound very promising and I’m looking forward to an album of which we can be really proud. We also filmed the last concert of the Spring Tour at Schloss Grafenegg for a potential DVD release. Hopefully that will also come to fruition.

Right now, I’m back in the UK following the end of the Rat Pack tour. I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of teaching and playing. I already have some of my previous students coming back for more punishment(!) and a few gigs in the book. We’ll get the details posted on the site as soon as they’re confirmed. One confirmed date that I’m very much looking forward to is at the Harrogate Jazz Club, this coming Tuesday, the 28th of April. I’ll be playing with my dear friend Jim Corry and his band “A Tribute To Atlantic Jazz“. It’s a great band, with whom I played a few hits last summer. Please come out and support if you’re local – details are in a news item we posted about it earlier. I shall be trying to record some of the gigs I play in the next few weeks, with a view to adding some live audio to the podcast. We’ll see how that pans out…

For now, have a great weekend and I’ll be back with more soon.