MORRISON’S Jazz Club will celebrate one year of operation tonight with a hard-swinging performance from renowned American musician Wycliffe Gordon.
Exactly one year ago Mr Gordon was the first international guest to headline at the intimate venue, a happy coincidence according to manager Sam Morrison.
“It was quite funny how it worked out, we knew Wycliffe was in town this month teaching at the academy and decided to book him for a show at the club,” he explained.
“I thought, ‘I’ll just use the same poster as last time and change the date’ and when I looked at it I realised it was the same date exactly and happened to be our one year anniversary.”
Tonight’s event promises to be jam-packed in every sense, with Mr Gordon returning to the stage to perform classic jazz tunes for a capacity crowd.
“Both seated and standing room tickets are sold out and seating is first in best dressed,” Mr Morrison said.
“Wycliffe will be singing and playing classic jazz from Louis Armstrong to Duke Ellington and there will be a guest appearance from James Morrison himself.”
“The celebrations will continue this weekend, we have an awesome band called Ekki and the Scatterbrains playing a funk and soul set this Saturday night – a few people might recognise them as they’ve played at the club a couple of times and they are students at the academy.”
The New York style venue, established by decorated musician James Morrison, evolved from the success of Generations In Jazz and the James Morrison Academy of Music.
“Living in bigger city’s there are more opportunities for students to even just go and listen to jazz music,” Mr Morrison said.
“The vision James and I had for the club was an atmospheric venue where academy students could watch world-class jazz artists and perform to an audience themselves and evolve as musicians.”
The jazz club has attracted regular international and Australian touring acts and bolstered the city’s night life.
“We have plenty of exciting events coming up,” Mr Morrison said.
“Gileno Santana of Brazil will be teaching at the academy for one month and we have booked him for a couple of gigs in October – he’s an amazing trumpeter.”
