St Mary in the Castle Sunday 27 January 2013

Mike always arranges his programmes so that whatever is one’s taste in music is catered for. So the melodies which filled the auditorium of St Mary’s on Sunday came from the pens of such diverse composers as Gounod and Manning Sherwin. (Manning Who?)

Not that tbe audience cared. The  music-lovers who filled the ground floor and spilled over into the balcony would happily have spent the morning listening to Mike’s Thirty-Two Preludes and Fugues on the theme of Three Blind Mice.

This was in fact not necessary.  With a first half ranging from Gershwin to Flanders & Swann we were treated to the Ave Maria, (the Gounod bit)  and that perennial Nightingale in Berkeley Square.( how apposite that a show tune from 1939 so evocative of  London and probably more popular now than ever should be written by American Manning Sherwin) Mike and his players proved their versatility, Chris as well as being hot stuff on the trombone proved that he doubles as a very worthwhile vocalist.

Flanders and Swann got the benefit of the Hatchard team in the somewhat less well-known Ill Wind  and the familiar with the cautionary tale of  Have some Madeira, m’dear.

George’s bass was heard to effect in Chris’s version of I Thought About You  with the audience showing its appreciation in the accepted manner for jazz. During the intermission Dennis Veness gave as usual his most welcome diversion on the piano, showing that you don’t have to be young and lovely (sorry, Dennis!) to produce sweet music.

Memories of Bing with Pennies from Heaven contrasted with an early Sinatra hit, All of Me. Johnny Mantel’s The Shadow of your Smile sequed into reminsences of Coward and Hutch, the Cafe de Paris and the cream of London Society with Mike’s variations on Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It.

A request for Gershwin’s Summertime from his opera Porgy & Bess (definitely in A minor) and I’ve Got You Under my Skin  made us realise how fortunate we are to have such distinguished musicians right here if not exactly under the skin, but definitely within our appreciation zone. 

Please Mike come with your comrades again … and  soon. MW