The Central Ohio Jazz Society presents the West End Jazz Band performing live this Sunday, May 20th in the Burgundy Room at the Makoy Center in Hilliard. The concert will feature some of the finest early jazz, swing, dixieland music in the Midwest. The West End Jazz Band hails from Chicago, and for the past 34 years, recreated the classic music that typifies the twenties and thirties using original arrangements and instrumentation that is true to the style of the era.
The band was organized by Mike Bezin, who had a great love for early jazz but was tired of hearing the same traditional tunes played by other jazz bands. The repertoire of West End consists of a broad representation of the music of this golden age, hot and sweet dance and jazz. Featured are the pure jazz numbers, the nonsense songs, the up-tempo tunes and also the beautiful ballads. This was the type of music for dancing and for those zany times when youth ran wild and made whoopee; songs such as “Hop Off,” “Stockholm Stomp,” and “The Charleston;” and the beautiful ballads like “Whose Honey Are You” and “Stardust.” Their book is full of great standards, obscure songs, as well as a number of straight dance medleys and waltzes that reflect the romantic and sweet side of that era.
West End has been invited to some of the most prestigious jazz festivals, played concerts throughout the United States and has also toured Europe twice, which included an important week-long engagement at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Nice, France. The band has recorded seven CDs and makes an annual train trek with private cars to the Blue Lantern, an historic dance hall on Hudson Lake, Indiana, where Bix Beiderbecke played for a summer engagement 1926. Also, they have regularly played the Sunday Jazz Brunch at the celebrated Milk Pail near Elgin, Illinois for over 12 years.
If you’re not familiar with the Central Ohio Hot Jazz Society, the mission of the Society is to preserve, perpetuate, promote, and encourage the performance of Classic/Traditional Jazz music; to secure greater recognition and encouragement of jazz musicians performing in this form of expression; to nurture the growth and appreciation of this music as the uniquely original American artform that it is; and to connect this music to younger generations and thereby promote a recognition of it as a fundamental part of their true musical heritage.
West End Jazz Band
Sunday, May 20, 2012
2 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Burgundy Room at the Makoy Center in Hilliard
5462 Center St.
$20 (non-members)
$15 (members)
$10 (dance club members)