Friday 28th November 2025 - The Parrott:Baartz Project
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Nicki and Martha (The Parrott:Baartz Project) are excited to be joining forces to change the musical landscape in the Northern Rivers with their unique blend of vocal jazz, blues and original music. They will be joined by Steve Russell (piano) and David Sanders (Drums).
Both artists have led their own bands for over two decades, and featured internationally amongst the best jazz artists. The Parrott:Baartz Project culminates in an expression of both historical and modern perspective. “(Martha) A world-class performer.” —Waldek Sibinski, Australia Jazz Museum “(Nicki) has that special gift you cannot buy in a music store.” —Les Paul |
Past Events
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Friday 31st October 2025
Always a pleasure to have this excellent, tight big band back, fronted by Col Atkinson with his powerhouse bass playing, crooning vocals and compering along with band leader Paul Radford on trombone. Well drilled sections, great trombone chorus, excellent sax and trumpet groupings, and brilliant rhythm section with great drive. New girl singer Lisa Angel added glorious vocal glamour, she’s a star of the future. Her stand-out number ”My Funny Valentine” brought the house down. Great to hear “Macarthur Park”, that timeless classic played so faultlessly with marvellous light and shade. Nice also to see the age range of this outfit, with the youngest player 14 and the oldest player 83! All the arrangements, whether classic standards or crowd-pleasing favourites were well chosen and faultlessly played. A great evening, thanks to Gold Coast Big Band. We’ll see you again soon! |
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Friday 26th September 2025
Sorry, still no review! |
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Friday 29th August 2025
Sorry, still no review! |
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Friday 25th July 2025
Info coming maybe? I've lost my reviewer! |
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Friday 27th June 2025
Imagine a vehicle travelling at a fair old lick down a deserted road with a white line down its centre. One side is labelled ‘Blues’, and the other ‘Rock and Roll’. Although the appropriate lane to be travelling in is on the ‘Blues’ side, occasionally the driver allows the nose to drift into ‘Rock and Roll’, to which it is closely related anyway. Now put that to music, and you have ‘Imperial Blues Review’, who belted it out for us at our June gig. In between nostalgic blasts of well-preserved raw Blues by revered former artists, the boys in the band occasionally broke into ‘time capsule’ defiant Rock and Roll numbers that will never be forgotten as long as our feet remember how to tap. Typical was the good old party favourite ‘Guitar Boogie Shuffle’, twelve bar Blues on a day out in ‘Memory Lane, Rock and Rollsville’, that had the dancers on the floor after the first bar, one of them a young mother with a baby in her arms! Led by Nick Churkin on drums and vocals, with guitarists Azo Bell and Tim Longworth on either side, and John Hellman thumping out the riffs on the upright bass, this outfit showed both their class and their provenance as former members of top Aussie bands, and delivered what they’ve excelled at for years. Another great night in a friendly venue, and as usual the food was first class. More, please! |
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Friday 30th May 2025
The ‘big band’ sound has a secure future in the Northern Rivers, thanks to the dedication, energy and foresight of a man named Andrew Montfroy, who is an accomplished trombone player himself, but who realised that there was a need to provide incentives and opportunities for young people who had shown musical talent at school to continue developing and applying their skills before they became lost. The result was the ‘Project Swing Big Band’, and we were delighted to enjoy the outcome. Seventeen musos, the vast majority of them in their late teens or early twenties, delivering time-honoured dancehall classics with all the confidence and verve of mature players, and with an enthusiasm that was contagious. Apart from instrumentals with novel arrangements from band members themselves, we were able to sing along with evergreen vocal numbers such as ‘Fly me to the moon’, ‘A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square’, ‘I’ve got you under my skin’ and ‘A foggy day in London Town’ that brought back such precious memories for most of us. Kudos, Mr Montfroy. You kept us there until the end, and not even the foul weather kept your audience away. |
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Friday 2nd May 2025
The weather was against us, but the die-hards who enjoy raw blues weren’t about to let that prevent them from turning out to hear ‘The Neighbours from Hell’ make their first appearance at the club. And they delivered what they promised. Azo Bell on guitar, Beat Gisler on bass, and Jamie Pattugalan on drums left us in no doubt that the most authentic Blues sound is the one that comes from sparse instrumentation powered by deep emotion, and there was plenty of that on display through their taut and dedicated delivery. There was also some relief from the intensity as the boys played around with better known melody lines, including a guitar version of Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’, and a rendition of ‘My Favourite Things’ that Julie Andrew could only have delivered if she was high on cocaine. To show Nature’s appreciation, it had stopped raining by the time we all left. |
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Friday 28th March 2025
The weather was filthy, but somehow they did it again with a capacity crowd, and those who braved the elements were well rewarded with two and a half hours of ‘the way it was’ in the Texas dance halls of the 1940s and 1950s. And to judge by the number of dancers in the specially extended dancing area, the music has definitely not lost its toe-tapping appeal. The ‘Warren Earl Western Swing Band’ have what it takes to honour the musical tradition established by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, with an authentic line-up of laptop steel, rhythm/ lead guitar, bass, drums and fiddle, and two vocalists who deftly deliver those haunting harmonies that in those days they called the ‘high lonesome’ sound. There was plenty there for those enthusiasts whose memories go back far enough to recall classics such as ‘Right or Wrong’, ‘Milk Cow Blues’ and ‘Crazy Arms’. And more than enough to warm the cockles of everyone’s hearts ahead of getting wet feet on the way home. |
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Friday 28th February 2025
Another brilliant evening with a capacity crowd. How do they keep doing it? By booking bands we all want to hear, that’s how, and this month was no exception. The Trombone Kellie Gang are firm Club favourites, so we knew what to expect, but WOW! From the get –go they were into it with enthusiasm and verve, and as usual appeared to be enjoying themselves as much as we were. The lady herself, Kellie Barnett, had presumably brought along a spare lung as she belted out the vocals, then switched to the trombone without seeming to pause for breath, while the man with ten fingers on each hand – Peter ‘Scrubby’ Hurcombe – reminded this audience member yet again why he gave up guitar playing. With the usual effortless support from Justin Pfeiffer on upright bass, Vonn Dengate on rasping sax, Rodney Ford on drums, and Anne-Maree Summerfield on harmony vocals, the most obvious things about this line-up are that they are well rehearsed, and that they love playing together. It shows in their faces and their music. Finally, a word of praise for ‘JT’s Kitchen’, who serve up delicious dishes at affordable prices at every gig, making the total evening’s experience one to look forward to every month. The length of the queue at their service window speaks for itself. |
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Friday 31st January 2025
What a great start to 2025! Another capacity crowd, this one eager to wallow in nostalgia for the music of bygone eras still in memory, and with the eighteen talented musos who comprise ‘A Hint of Swing’ only too eager to supply it. One revival followed another, often in the form of an arrangement gifted to the band by a supportive admirer, in what amounted to a systematic plunder of the American Songbook. Among the expertly delivered classics were ‘Rout 66’, ‘My Sweet Embraceable You’, ‘Gone Fishin’. ‘It’s almost like being in love’, ‘Black Bottom’, ‘Perhaps, Perhaps’ and ‘The Girl from Ipanema’. It’s so reassuring to see the club so firmly back on its feet after the lean years of COVID and the floods. And to judge by the upcoming gigs advertised in its Newsletter, that’s not about to change. Bring it on! |
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Friday 29th November 2024
A capacity crowd began filing through the doors an hour before the main act had even taken to the stage for the November Xmas Treat gig, but given that they were jazz royalty ‘Galapagos Duck’, it was hardly surprising. Eager attendees with long memories knew of their unrivalled history, and when the first mention was made of Sydney’s ‘Basement’, the venue that gave birth to them in the 1960s, there was a roar of appreciation. The same loud and joyful response followed every number, some of them new, but many of them old and tested, such as ‘Smoke gets In your eyes’, ‘Please don’t talk about me when I’m gone’, and a very personalised version of ‘When I grow too old to dream’ from keyboard player David Spicer, who in his spare time is the Vocal Studies Svengali at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. Completing the line-up were leader John Conley on bass, Tweed Valley Jazz Club regular Rodney Ford on drums and vocals, Adam Thomas on saxophone (another talent regularly enjoyed at the Club), and special guest Govinda Abbot on trumpet. It seems that the attendance for this gig was the largest of the year, and no wonder! Thanks for a fantastic year of music, whoever it is we need to thank, and please let’s have more of the same in 2025. |
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© 2017 Tweed Valley Jazz And Blues Club Inc
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