Michael Garrick - Peter Pan Jazzdance Suite (2024)

Celebrating his recent 70th birthday, it is perhaps fitting that Britain's Peter Pan of jazz, Michael Garrick, should portray J.M. Barrie's creation with the musical candour that has kept his musical career fresh and eclectic for 40 years. The suite signals a number of "firsts": Anita Wardell's humorous-dramatic art as well as her jazz singing gifts; big band sounds (first presented at Beechwood School, Tunbridge Wells) for children's involvement in art, poetry drama and their own improvisations; Garrick's music written specifically for dance, free or choreographed; the debut of the orchestra's choral emissions and Michael's role as speaker/poet. Garrick's compositions remain 100% true to jazz and to the way that Duke Ellington expanded the horizons of the jazz tradition. At the same time they keep a firm and loving gaze on Pan's - and our - eternal plight and the enchanting richness of its fun, beauty and sadness. An important figure on the British jazz scene in the 1960s Garrick's contributions were chronicled on Gilles Peterson's recent best-selling compilation, 'Impressed'.