Nyjo Fifty National Youth Jazz Orchestra

• 1Mama Badgers09:30
• 2Dreams05:31
• 3Wintermute06:44
• 4Rush Hour07:10
• 5Sea Master08:16
• 6Sub Hub Hubbub09:07
• 7No Pão De Açúcar09:39
• 8Red Squirrel08:28
• 9No Man Is an Island08:10
• 10St. Louis Blues06:11
• 11He's Just My Bill07:28
• 12Ballad for Loos06:34
• 13Lullaby of Broadway05:24
• 14My Romance04:05
• 15Never the Twain06:43
• 16What Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life?05:32
• 17A Foggy Day07:14
• 18Going Dutch05:48
• 19Finding My Feet05:09
• Total Runtime02:12:43

Info for Nyjo Fifty

"NYJO FIFTY" celebrates the 50th anniversary of a British institution, The National Youth Jazz Orchestra. The album reflects the wide range in repertoire, style and musical colours for which NYJO has become known, with a look at new repertoire and some of the band's past favourites to celebrate 50 years as the UK's premier youth big band.

A double-disc album, the band's contemporary material makes up Disc 1 with more traditional material on Disc 2. The album features special guest soloists in Mark Nightingale (trombone) and Gareth Lockrane (flute). Mark's "He's Just My Bill" has been a stalwart, and as yet unrecorded, selection in NYJO's live concerts for many years. Gareth is featured on the Yellowjackets' number "Rush Hour". The album also features saxophonist Julian Siegel and his "Mama Badgers", while guest pianist Zoe Rahman's "Red Squirrel" gets a reworking from its original piano-trio version into a full-scale big band arrangement by NYJO Artistic & Music Director Mark Armstrong.

Since 2010 NYJO has commissioned new music from leading UK jazz composers. Some of this was featured on their 2012 release The Change and this time includes "Wintermute" by Kit Downes, "No Man Is An Island" by Laura Jurd and "Sub Hub Hubbub" by Jason Yarde. The album also remembers the great Stan Tracey in ex-NYJO pianist Steve Melling's arrangement of "Ballad for Loos", taken from Stan's final release The Flying Pig.

NYJO is one of Britain's longest-running ensembles for young people under 25 playing big-band jazz. Founded by Bill Ashton OBE in 1965, the orchestra offered aspiring young musicians the opportunity to rehearse, write and gain experience in live performance at a time when UK jazz education was in its infancy. NYJO features 23 musicians and vocalists from around the country, most of whom go on to become professional musicians. Alumni include Guy Barker, Mark Nightingale, Gerard Presencer, Pete Long, Dennis and Winston Rollins and Amy Winehouse.

"It takes only two tracks of this celebratory double album to establish the breadth, maturity and technical excellence of this long-established proving ground of UK jazz talent...the band intersperses fresh-minted arrangements with back-catalogue favourites and full-on blare with gentle balladry and contemporary funk" (Financial Times)

"This youthful orchestra can pack a punch as devastating as any big band anywhere...A splendid affair with excellent performances all round." (Jazz Journal)

"A milestone...These are todays players, equally good at both genres (contemporary and swing) and raring to go." (Jazzwise)

Mark Armstrong, music director
Rosie Stano, flute
Jim Gold, alto saxophone, clarinet
Sam Glaser, alto saxophone, clarinet
David Healey, tenor saxophone, clarinet
Tom Ridout, tenor saxophone, clarinet
Jessamy Holder, baritone saxophone, flute, clarinet
Alex Chadwick, baritone saxophone
James Davison, trumpet, flugelhorn
Tom Dennis, trumpet, flugelhorn
James Copus, trumpet, flugelhorn
Tom Gardner, trumpet, flugelhorn
Alistair Martin, trumpet, flugelhorn
Matthew Yardley, trumpet, flugelhorn
Jakes Labazzi, trumpet, flugelhorn
Tom Dunnett, trombone
Owen Dawson, trombone
Chris Valentine, trombone
Maddie Dowdeswell, trombone
Chris Saunders, trombone
Jasper Rose, trombone
James Buckle, trombone
Rupert Cox, piano
Rob Luft, guitars
Nick Fitch, guitars
Joe Downard, bass
David Dyson, drums
Max Mills, percussion
Jessica Radcliffe, vocals

National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO)
is a glittering showcase for the UK’s finest young professional jazz musicians, combining a hard-swinging rhythm section and a raft of hugely talented soloists, to bring you the very best in British big-band jazz. Under the Artistic Direction of Mark Armstrong, the 23-piece orchestra perform around 40 concerts a year nationally and internationally, and aim to inspire the next generation of young jazz musicians with education work wherever they tour. Over its 53-year history, NYJO has helped launch the careers of many of the country’s most renowned jazz musicians including Guy Barker, Amy Winehouse, Mark Nightingale, Gwilym Simcock and Mercury Award Nominee Laura Jurd.

NYJO’s recent highlights include a highly acclaimed appearance at the BBC Proms in August 2018, and a collaborative concert tour in September 2018 to Germany and Holland with their German and Dutch national youth jazz orchestra equivalents BuJazzO and NJJO entitled Three Nations Under One Groove.

Mark Armstrong
was born in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne but brought up in Amersham where he attended Dr Challoner’s Grammar School. took a degree in Music at Oxford University and attended the postgraduate course in jazz and studio music at the Guildhall School of Music, gaining an LGSM in Jazz.

Mark’s playing career has included a wide variety of styles and genres. He was a member of Clark Tracey’s Quintet for seven years, recording two albums, The Calling (2003) and The Mighty Sas (2006) and played regularly with Clark’s father Stan Tracey, recording with Stan on his final quintet album The Flying Pig (2013) and with Stan’s big band live from the 2006 Appleby jazz festival as well as performing with the big band at the 2009 BBC Proms. Mark’s work as a sideman has also seen him playing Latin Jazz with Robin Jones’s Sextet, Mainstream and traditional jazz with the Pasadena Roof Orchestra and bebop with Peter Long’s Gillespiana in which the Times’s Alyn Shipton described his playing as “pirouetting through Gillespie’s breaks quicker than a hummingbird’s wings” and John Fordham of the Guardian described him as “the solo star of the outfit”. Mark was nominated in the best trumpet category of the 2007 Ronnie Scott Jazz Awards. Mark still performs regularly as a jazz trumpet player: as a member of the Ronnie Scott Jazz Orchestra and in his own quartet, which released the Album Coastbound in 2010.

Mark’s career as a conductor began at Oxford where he helped to resurrect the Oxford University Big Band. After joining the National Youth Jazz Orchestra he was asked by founding Music Director Bill Ashton to act as his assistant, a position he maintained for almost 15 years before being appointed as NYJO’s Artistic and Music Director in 2011. Since this appointment the orchestra has recorded its first studio album for many years, The Change, and appeared at the 2012 BBC Proms concerts: one of the few Proms to be televised that year, and the London Jazz Festival in 2012 and 2013.

Mark’s additional education work includes his position as Jazz Professor at the Royal College of Music, which combines academic lecturing and practical coaching and tuition, lecturing in composition at the London Centre of Contemporary Music, and teaching the trumpet at James Allen’s Girls’ School. Mark is also a jazz moderator and trainer, and both main panel and jazz examiner for the ABRSM.

Mark is a past winner of the BBC Big Band Competition arranging prize, and many of his big band compositions can be heard on recent NYJO albums. A recent commission, the Solstice Suite for big band was performed at the 2009 North Sea Jazz Festival. He writes a wide range of arrangements and compositions from choral music to symphony orchestra.

Mark lives in South East London with his wife, conductor Elinor Corp and children Rosie, Henry and Lucy.

This album contains no booklet.