July-August ’08

This month sees the end of the Rat Pack Tour for the time being. The show is playing in Brighton, Norwich and Bournemouth before it wraps up for the summer.

Bryan will be playing most of these dates but will be taking time out from the weekend in Norwich to head out to the beautiful La Perelada castle in Spain to play a casino show with Chris Mann and Mark Adams who are presenting their “Frank and Dean” show.

The day after the end of the Rat Pack tour, Bryan will be playing at the Manchester Jazz Festival with sensational Latin-Jazz Big Band La Gran Descarga. He played a handful of gigs with them last summer and it’s really a great band. They are playing the first half of a double bill with Roberto Fonseca at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. For fans of Latin-American music, it’ll be a great night – come out and say hello!

For the remainder of the month of July, Bryan will be doing various other gigs including a Rat Pack event at the Liverpool Echo Arena and also playing with the fabulous Syd Lawrence Orchestra. Confirmed dates for August include gigs with The Real Macaws, 2 days in Glasgow playing “The Motown Show”, a weekend with the Glenn Miller Orchestra UK and an appearance at the “Jazz In The City” festival in Leeds with Steve Parry‘s “Big Band from Hell”. You can check the Schedule for further details.

In addition to these gigs, Bryan will be available to teach trumpet lessons in the Leeds area. He will available until sometime in early September at which point he will be making a big move away from Leeds – more details about that later, once the timetable has been confirmed. If you’d like to study with Bryan, please don’t delay – you may not have the chance for that long! To set up a lesson, please get in contact and we’ll organise it.

Bryan had a fantastic trip to Austria at the end of May, playing with Thomas Gansch and his band; Gansch & Roses. We’ll add more news about it shortly. The first concert they played, at the Schagerl Brass Festival, was broadcast live online by TheMusicPage.com – highlights will be available soon on the site. We’ll link to them once they become available. In the meantime, please enjoy this video of the band playing Thomas’ Bill Chase tribute – “Der Rock Des Trompeters” – from the gig at Porgy & Bess in Vienna.