July-August ’08

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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.

June ’08

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June kicks off with a break from the regular Rat Pack routine – Bryan will be playing Lead Trumpet with the Wigan Jazz Club Big Band at the Southport Jazz Festival on Sunday the 1st of June. It promises to be a fun concert; we’re backing Andy Greenwood who will be paying tribute to the late, great Maynard Ferguson in a programme entitled “Remembering Maynard”.

The rest of the month continues much as usual with Rat Pack dates in Bromley, Swansea, Reading, Nottingham and Southend-on-Sea.

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.

May ’08

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Bryan is continuing the Rat Pack – Live from Las Vegas UK Tour throughout May. However, he will be taking some time off towards the end of the month to head back out to Austria with Thomas Gansch and his band; Gansch & Roses. They are playing 4 dates in various parts of Austria, including one at the magnificent Porgy and Bess Jazz Club in Vienna, and a performance at the Schagerl Brass Festival 2008. Please check the Schedule for more details.

Bryan will also have a free day in Vienna and is available for lessons/clinics, as he is during the continuing Rat Pack tour. If you are interested, please check the Schedule for the dates and contact him to set it up.

You may notice some strangeness with the website over the next few days as we tweak the new design which is now online. If you notice anything weird or broken (columns not lining up etc) please send an email via the Contact page with details of your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox etc) and operating system (Windows, Mac or Linux) so we can go on a bug hunt!!

March ’08

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Following some server problems the site had to be taken down and re-uploaded today. Therefore, there are still some things broken and/or weird. Since Bryan has to play the show in Houston tonight, it may be a short time before everything’s back to normal. Please be patient….

January ’08

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Happy New Year!!

The New Year festivities were somewhat rushed for Bryan as he had to travel directly from Toronto, where the last show was on NYE, to Graz in Austria to rejoin the Rat Pack European tour on January 2nd. He will be performing the show in Graz until Jan. 6th, followed by weeks in Hannover, Bremen and Essen, in Germany, before returning to Birmingham AL in the US, at the end of the month.

Bryan had a great time playing in Los Angeles and Toronto throughout December and thanks go to all the musicians who joined him on the show, most notably the trumpets; Rick Baptist, Dan Fornero and Willie Murillo (LA), and Shawn Moody and Jason Logue (Toronto). More will follow about Bryan’s time in LA in a News item shortly.