New Radio Interview

Here’s a little thing I did a few days ago for BBC Radio Cumbria, with the lovely Anne Hopper. It features a couple of exclusive clips of the recent show.

YouTube Promo Trailer

Hi folks.

No apologies for the lack of posts recently! It dawned on me that this blog was meant to chart the progress of the concert and seeing as that’s happened, I reckon I’m allowed to not post anything!

Still, things in many ways are continuing with the concert. We’ve been very busy preparing both a video and an audio version of the concert and I’m happy to say that the DVD video version has been signed off at this end. It looks fantastic. Sadly, without a considerable investment, it won’t be available for anyone to see.

These things are very expensive. Musicians need paying. Song rights need paying for. Disc manufacture needs paying for. This all amounts to many thousands of pounds, with no suggestion that we’d ever sell enough to make it pay. Essentially we need a wealthy benefactor to pay for it all, so if anyone has any bright ideas, please, please get in touch!

In the meantime, we’ve prepared a seven minute promo trailer, which has been beautifully compiled by Roger Keech. I’m delighted with it, it gives a real flavour of the concert. I hope you like it. Feel free to share it, link to it, comment on it, like it, blog it, tweet it, post it to Facebook, do what the hell you like with it really!

Interview for Lancaster University TV

Well, I did a little interview last week for the Lancaster University TV station, which the interviewer Chris Osborn has just sent me. I can’t quite bear to watch it today, but it should give you a little insight into what I’m thinking and what I’m hoping to achieve by all this work I’ve been doing recently.

Sorry I look so rough, it was a last minute to grab an opportunity and record it whilst I was busy doing other things!

 

Jack Hylton 50th Anniversary Exhibition

So tomorrow is concert day, but today was exhibition day. To be honest, I don’t know anything about how to put an exhibition together so I pretty much put a load of stuff in some cabinets and then ate a Greggs sausage roll.

The picture above is of one of the cabinets which I filled full of various bits of Hylton ephemera, rare and unseen pictures, newspaper articles, gramophone records, press cuttings books, programmes, that sort of thing.

There’s plenty more there too:

Why this is such a big deal…

Outside the Jack Hylton Music Rooms

 

As we’ve got closer to tomorrow’s concert, I’ve had a number of conversations with people, many of whom didn’t really know what I was doing or why I was doing it. It’s funny but when you express these things out loud they seem to have more resonance.

As is well documented on these pages, I started my interest in Hylton during my music degree at Lancaster University, which began in 1992. By the end of my three years, it was clear I was going to investigate the man a little further. Once that process began, there was always ongoing conversations about putting on a show doing Hylton music. Of course at that stage there was no detail in there, but the idea of me presenting a show with a band playing Hylton music from the Hylton archive and doing it at the university was set literally twenty years ago.

Preparation, preparation, preparation

I realise I ought to be telling you about what’s going on with plans for this week’s big concert/ book launch/ CD launch/ exhibition launch/ everything else, but ironically I’m so busy doing things that I can’t seem to find time to do anything!

So, the script is written, the exhibition exhibits are being packed up, the books are boxed and ready to go, as are the CDs and now all I really need to do is pack up my suits and my baton, and learn all the music! There are more seats being released and it looks like there’ll be plenty of people there. There’s so much to do on Wednesday and Thursday and so many people to look out for that things will be pretty mental but once it’s all done and dusted, I’ll tell you all about it, and be able to report back with photos, video and hopefully lots of lovely stories about meeting and talking to lots of lovely people.

If you’re coming to see it and you’ve been reading this, please do introduce yourself. I’m sorry in advance for not having enough time to talk to everyone, but I’ll do my best to get round you all, especially if you buy a copy of my book!

Once the concert is over, everything will be released and start to be available first from the shop on the official Hylton website http://www.jackhylton.com and soon after in some of the usual online places. For now the book and CD won’t be available in your regular book shops, but you can still get it easily enough from the website.

Right, I better get back to my preparation. More soon…

A Little Update

Well, folks, as I alluded to in my last post, sometimes life is more important than the internet and that’s the way things have panned out for me over the last few weeks. I won’t bore you with the details, but I’m back onto thinking about matters Hyltonian. Just as well, really, given how soon the concert is.

So, whilst all that is going on, I’ve been commissioned to transcribe another load of arrangements for Lancaster University Music Society, and the deadline has rather crept up on me.

This week has been spent working on a different style of arrangement and it’s thrown up a few interesting things. The picture above is of an arrangement of “The Man I Love”, which, it transpires, was never recorded by the band. It’s clearly been used, so I assume it was used for some concerts. We don’t have a date, or very much information at all, other than the fact it was arranged by Leighton Lucas.

Alex Mendham and His Orchestra

Well, you have these bright ideas, and you’re never sure whether you should bother. As you’ll be aware, I’ve recently made all my score writing work available on the Jack Hylton website, for people to download, print off, and play. For free. Sounds daft, but nobody would pay a ‘fair’ price anyway, so I may as well spread the love, I was doing it anyway!

I wasn’t really sure whether there was any point to it, or whether anyone would be bothered enough to try them out. Of course then there’s the worry about whether they would work!

Worry no longer. The rather splendid Alex Mendham and his rather splendid orchestra have performed Life Begins At Oxford Circus. Not only that, they video’d it!

Here you go. Thanks Alex, hope the arrangement was OK for you all.

Find the band @AMOrchestra http://www.alexmendham.com

She Shall Have Music

Well, as if I’ve not offered you enough video in the last few days, here’s another cracker. It’s the 1935 film “She Shall Have Music”, in full. Again, it’s a transfer from a VHS, so it’s not the best quality, but it’s lots of fun!

Enjoy!

Exciting concert ticket details!

Well, it would appear that this concert really is happening. Here, check out this link:

https://www.liveatlica.org/whats-on/the-band-that-jack-built

Please buy tickets to this most lovely thing, it’ll be weird to do it to an empty house. It’s January 29th, at Lancaster University, featuring Michael Law’s Piccadilly Dance Orchestra augmented with strings and conducted by me. There’ll be all sorts going on, there’s a pre-concert talk by me, and it’ll be the first chance to buy my Hylton book and CDs of rare Hylton material which has never been on CD before.

Tickets aren’t yet available to the general public (only to Live at LICA supporters – whatever that means) but as soon as they’re generally available I’ll let you know.

I think it’ll be fun. Then afterwards we’ll all have a little drink.

More details soon.