Exploring music

There is a piece of music that always brings me out in goosebumps. I can tell you exactly when I heard it for the first time: 30 September 1965, and I was seven-and-a-half years old.

The composer’s name is not very well known, but this piece would be recognised by a multitude of people, young and old. Its original, full orchestral version is rarely performed these days, but in versions for concert bands, brass bands and other groups, it gets regular airings. It has a very percussive start, something that has always appealed to me - perhaps it played some part in persuading me to become a percussionist - but although the main theme is played by the brass, even the accompanying background string writing is memorable. Structurally, it is rather like a Viennese waltz (though it is certainly not in 3/4 time!), in that there are two secondary melodic sections, one in which the strings dominate and the other with a prominent saxophone solo. However, that insistent drum rhythm comes back to herald the recap of the main theme, this time with a coda featuring a dominant pedal that makes me tingle just writing about it!

Jazz is often referred to as America’s classical music; a broad genre which encapsulates some of the country’s diverse cultural heritage.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the port city of New Orleans provided the unique environment for different musical styles to cross-pollinate. The blues — hailing from the slave workers of America’s Deep South — blended with gospel, opera, ragtime, Latin and marching bands to create what many consider the earliest style of jazz: dixieland.

With no real precedent to follow, a complex web of jazz sub-genres emerged throughout the 20th century. The 1930s saw the era of ‘swing’ — the heyday of big bands with celebrity band leaders such as Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. In the 1940s, musicians such as Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie pioneered ‘bebop’, characterised by its fast tempo, rapid changing harmony and dexterous melodies.

After World War Two, a more relaxed tempo and lighter tone emerged in the form of ‘cool jazz’. In the 1970s, ‘fusion jazz’ incorporated elements of rhythm and blues, and rock and funk. This was followed in the early 1990s by ‘smooth jazz’, a sub-genre which, for some, strayed too far from the original spirit of jazz’s New Orleans roots.

Oh, I should have said: the composer’s name is Barry Gray, and the music is the signature tune for the TV show, Thunderbirds!

Whatever suspicions my parents might have had that I had musical tendencies, I can’t honestly say that I had any awareness of it myself. I would probably have been humming the music to myself after only one or two episodes but would have thought that was nothing special.

Nowadays I’m a busy bee. I belong to two Making Music groups, Bromley Symphony Orchestra as timpanist and Bromley Philharmonic Choir as a tenor, but I regularly play for a long list of other orchestras too. David Coronel

Jazz musicians today try to steer clear of labels, but a few musical features continue to transcend the wide-ranging genre: harmonic freedom, syncopation, swing rhythms and improvisation.

Any combination of instruments or voices can perform jazz, but the two most common type of groups are the big band (usually saxophones, trumpets, trombones and a rhythm section) and smaller ‘combos’ (usually a quartet or quintet comprising of a solo instrument or voice with rhythm section).

If you’re looking to try jazz yourself, there’s no need to worry about improvising; most leisure-time groups will have notated music to introduce you to the genre.

Use our find a group tool to find a jazz group near you: makingmusic.org.uk/find