January ’09

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Happy New Year!!

This month sees Bryan Davis performing the last few dates of the Christmas With The Rat Pack UK tour. This will definitely be the last UK/European stint with the Rat Pack for a while. The show is on hiatus, except in the USA, until sometime later in the year, by which time Bryan should have finally made the move to New York. You can catch Bryan playing Lead Trumpet with the Rat Pack Big Band at the St Georges Hall in Bradford on the 2nd, the Grimsby Auditorium on the 3rd and the Liverpool Philharmonic on the 5th. Please stop by the Stage Door and say hello if you make it to any of these shows.

The rest of January will be spent subbing a few shows on Cinderella; the pantomime at the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford. Bryan will also be playing with the Pasadena Roof Orchestra at their concert in Leeds on the 18th. Other than that, Bryan will be catching up on real life at home! Following 38 weeks away on the road in 2008, as well as numerous other gigs, that should make for a welcome change! However, don’t be afraid to get in touch if you need a Trumpet player for your band!

Bryan is available, as ever, to teach Trumpet lessons whether at home or on the road. He is also available as Clinician and/or Guest Artist to come and work with School/Youth/College Bands. He was pleased to perform with the Jazz Band I at Fullerton College in Fullerton, California back in October 2008. He is pencilled in to coach the GCDYO Swing Band in Grimsby, UK in January this year. There will be a ‘Teaching’ page added to the site shortly with details about Bryan’s Educational activities. For more information in the meantime, please use the Contact page to get in touch.

Looking ahead, there are already some interesting gigs in Bryan’s diary for 2009. The Rat Pack – Live at the Sands US Tour starts again in late February. The show will be visiting Louisville KY, Dallas TX, Schenectady NY, Tampa Bay FL, Portland OR and Costa Mesa CA before the end of April. There are also 3 tours planned with the LACJO during 2009. There are Spring and Autumn tours in Austria and then, in late October, the band should be travelling to China to perform at the 11th China Shanghai International Arts Festival. There is a News item with more details about all of that. There is also a date with Ryan Quigley’s Big Band at the Glasgow Jazz Festival in June. Ryan is a fine Trumpet player who is well known in the Scottish Jazz scene. His band is likely to include such luminaries as Nigel Hitchcock (alto), Mark Nightingale (tbn) and possibly even Wayne Bergeron and Roger Ingram (tpts). Should be a lot of fun! Between those confirmed dates and Bryan’s emigration to the USA, it promises to be a busy year for him, so please check back here often for more news!

A highlight of 2008 was Bryan’s trip to Austria in May with Thomas Gansch and his band. The first concert was at the Schagerl Brass Festival and part of that concert is featured on the Schagerl Brass Festival 2008 DVD. One of the tracks has found it’s way on to YouTube and we present it here for your enjoyment.

November ’08

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This month, Bryan is continuing The Rat Pack – Live At The Sands US National Tour. He will be visiting Omaha NE, Oklahoma City and Tulsa before returning to the UK to play many of the dates on the Christmas With The Rat Pack UK Tour in December and January.

During October, Bryan was in the USA also. Besides playing Rat Pack shows in Salt Lake City, UT and Tempe, AZ, he also spent a week or so in Los Angeles. Whilst the trip there was primarily for personal reasons(!) he also had the tremendous pleasure of appearing as Guest Artist with the Jazz Band at Fullerton College in Fullerton, CA. The concert was a lot of fun and seemed to be a tremendous success. Bryan wishes to thank Jazz Director Bruce Babad, as well as the fine players in the band, for inviting him out to play with them. We hope to have some audio/video clips up on the site before long.

Speaking of the website, we should point out that following some problems during a recent software update, much of it was accidentally deleted! The astute return visitor may notice the abscence of several features. We are working hard to replace them and hope to resume full service before long! In the meantime, the site is a little more streamlined but most of the important information is still available. Keep checking for regular updates over the next few weeks.

Bryan had a fantastic trip to Austria in September, to play the first concert with the newly formed Lower Austrian Concert Jazz Orchestra. It was a great concert and the band sounded fantastic! There is a tour planned for March ’09 – more details about that in due course. We should also have some audio and video footage from that concert soon.

In the meantime, please continue to enjoy this video from Bryan’s earlier Austria trip at the end of May, playing with Thomas Gansch and his band; Gansch & Roses. The band is playing Thomas’ Bill Chase tribute – “Der Rock Des Trompeters” – from the gig at Porgy & Bess in Vienna.

More Rat Pack US Tour Dates/End Of An Era

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Now we’ve managed to get our work visas sorted, I guess it’s safe to announce that I’ll be out on the road with “The Rat Pack – Live At The Sands” US Tour from next week. We kick off in Salt Lake City, Utah on October 7th. The following week we visit Tempe, Arizona. Further dates follow in November with visits to Omaha NE, Oklahoma City and Tulsa (both in Oklahoma!).

Before that, I’ll be bidding a fond farewell to the Rat Pack European Tour on Saturday 4th October in Preston. Ahead of the US Tour and my subsequent emigration to the United States, I’ve handed my notice in. I’ll be back in the UK from late November, primarily to finalise my US Visa to move over. It’s possible that I’ll dep on a few Rat Pack dates on the Christmas Tour in December; we’ll have to wait and see. In any case, I hope to have left the UK by sometime in January 2009.

It’s odd to be leaving all my friends on the show after 4 and a half years. I’ll still get my Rat Pack fix, of course, with the US Tour with which I’ll continue for the time being. That’s a curious situation though, because I’m so used to playing with the same band in the UK whereas we meet new musicians in every venue in the States. I’ll really miss the guys and a huge vote of thanks goes out to all of them, particularly the Brass section: Kevin Ferris and Dave Ford (trumpets), and Keith Hutton, Andy Watson and Bruce Douglas (trombones). What else can I say? You guys are awesome to play and hang with and it’s been a huge honour to know you all! Thanks for putting up with me!

So where to next? The short answer is New York! My long suffering fiancee Cynthia and I are getting married (at last) and I’m joining her over there rather than vice versa. At least, that’s the plan – the Visa isn’t completely finalised yet, although it seems to be running smoothly at the moment. So, if you’re in the New York area, or indeed on tour anywhere in the US, and need a Trumpet player from mid-January on; please give me a call. I’d love to here from you.

More news about all of this will follow in due course….

Rat Pack Roundup #2 – Los Angeles

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Following all my good intentions at the end of 2007 about keeping up with News updates, I singularly failed to actually write anything! Here’s the next installment of my Rat Pack US Tour ’07-’08 adventure.

Los Angeles – Dec ’07

Los Angeles, Dec.'07.We had a great time playing at the Wilshire Theatre in Beverley Hills for the first 2 weeks of December. I previously mentioned that I had the legendary Rick Baptist and Dan Fornero joining me in the Trumpet section but that turned out to be just the beginning of the story!!

We had a great time playing the show and I count myself as extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to listen to, play with and learn from these wonderful musicians first hand. Both are players I’ve admired on records for many years and it took me some time to get over the fact that I was playing with them at all! To put it in context; I was asked on the rehearsal break, by one of my friends and colleagues on the stage crew, how the band was in LA? My response: –
“I might as well be sitting between Santa Claus and Superman!”

More important even than the musical side of things was the friendship they both showed me. I was invited on various excursions with them throughout our stay in LA. Rick did me the honour of taking me to work with him one day! Sounds ordinary when you put it like that but, in fact, he took me to the recording stage at Fox Studios to watch a session for the TV show “American Dad”. That was a tremendous thrill! Not only because it’s the same production team that works on my favourite of the current US cartoons, “Family Guy” but also because of the living legends I met in the band! The other Trumpets flanking Rick on this occasion were none other than Warren Luening and Charley Davis! The trombones were no slouches either: Bob McChesney, Charlie Loper, Ira Nepus and Bill Reichenbach! It was a fantastic day out – thanks Rick!

Dan was kind enough to take me on an equally star-studded excursion the following day. We met up at the Musicians Union building in Hollywood where I had a chance to sit in on the rehearsal with Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band! It was definitely an experience to sit back in the Trumpet section with Dan, Wayne Bergeron and a pair of stellar subs; Willie Murillo and Serafin Aguilar. Willie, who also subbed for Rick on the show for a couple of days, is best known as Lead Trumpet with Brian Setzer’s Orchestra, and Serafin was a member of the last Big Bop Nouveau band led by the late, great, Maynard Ferguson. Of course, the particular thrill was to hear Wayne Bergeron who is undoubtedly one of the greatest trumpet players out there, and a really nice guy! It was awesome to watch them all put through their paces by Mr Goodwin’s wonderfully complex music – I’m glad I didn’t have to play!! It was also great to meet the other guys in the band as well as seeing some familiar faces; the two Tenor saxophonists, Brian Scanlon and Jeff Driskill, were playing the show with us in LA, and Baritone saxophonist Jay Mason had been with us a couple of weeks before in San Diego. The rehearsal was for a gig the following week, on the day we were due to leave (!), but it was such an experience to see this band live that I changed my flight and stayed the extra day – well worth the expense!!

While we were in LA, I was delighted to be invited to head down to Fullerton College to coach their Jazz Band I. The Director of the Fullerton Jazz programme is Bruce Babad, a fine saxophonist who also played the show when we were in San Diego. More importantly, Bruce is better known for playing in the Big Band of legendary composer/arranger Bill Holman! Bruce has been doing a great job at Fullerton and the band was really good. We had a lot of fun and I particularly enjoyed having the chance to give my demonstration of “what not to do” as a member of the trumpet section. That can sometimes be as important and useful as demonstrating the right way to do things and has proven helpful in previous workshops I’ve participated in. I’m also pleased to say that Bruce has invited me to come back and be Guest Artist with the band in October ’08. There will be a proper announcement about that in due course.

That just about wraps up my highlights of the Rat Pack trip to Los Angeles. I’d like to thank all the guys who joined us in the band and I’m pleased to say that I can name them all for a change! They were:

  • Trumpets: Rick Baptist/Willie Murillo, Dan Fornero
  • Trombones: Jim Sawyer, Bob McChesney & Craig Gosnell
  • Reeds: Brian Scanlon, Jeff Driskill, Gene Cipriano & John Mitchell
  • Guitar: Mike Higgins
  • Bass: Kenny Wild/Chuck Berghofer
  • Keyboards: Nelson Kole

…and not forgetting our regular travelling team of:

  • Andy Rumble – Piano/MD
  • Dave Bryant – Drums

More Rat Pack Roundups shortly….