Music /  The Sounds of the Rat Pack at the Q-PAC, The Blamey Street Big Band. At The B, Queanbeyan, October 24. Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS.

The Blamey Street Big Band has rapidly built up a growing audience for its regular concerts at The B in the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre.

A perfect venue for this type of presentation, with excellent sound and lighting, and where every seat is a good one.

Boasting some of the city’s finest jazz musicians, this trim, taut and terrific 19-piece ensemble has become celebrated for Andrew Hackwill’s innovative arrangements of the big band repertoire, performed under the fastidious baton of its affable conductor, Ian McLean.

But for this concert all the arrangements were drawn from the BSBB’s own extensive music library, being published and purchased charts, mostly by staff arrangers for the big bands of the period, such as Quincy Jones and Sammy Cahn, with a few by Australian Ed Wilson, trombone player, leader and arranger of the famed Daly-Wilson Big Band.

This concert concentrated on music associated with The Rat Pack, a legendary group of celebrities, initially Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, who not only performed on stage together, but also appeared in each other’s films, television shows and recordings.

As its fame spread, female celebrities also became part of The Rat Pack, famously Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli, and Marilyn Monroe. Their contributions were recognised in this concert, as was the influence the music associated with The Rat Pack had on generations of vocalists who followed them, represented by three of the region’s best in Leisa Keen, Steve Amosa and Jared Newall.

So, after Mclean introduced the band with a cracking arrangement for the Count Basie Orchestra of Fly Me to the Moon, Newall got the concert off to a flying start with three songs associated with Frank Sinatra, Pennies from Heaven, The Best is Yet to Come and You Make Me Feel So Young.

Keen continued with superb renditions of songs associated with Judy Garland, Over the Rainbow and Zing Went the Strings of My Heart, which Amosa followed with more Sinatra repertoire, Come Fly with Me, I Get A Kick Out of You, and New York, New York.

Then it was song after song in a generous program of 28 such classics, interrupted only by an interval or an interesting tidbit about a song or Rat Pack member, offered by Mclean or one of the vocalists.

Among many highlights were Keen’s delightful renditions of Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend, and I Wanna be Loved by You, both associated with Marilyn Monroe, Amosa’s red-hot version of It Had to be You, a song associated with Harry Connick Jr, and Newall’s laid-back rendition of Ain’t That a Kick in the Head, a song forever associated with Dean Martin.

A highlight for everyone was the surprise appearance of 16-year-old Kofi Amosa, who joined his dad, Steve, for a swinging rendition of song associated with Michael Buble, Feeling Good. Living proof of the adage, “an apple never falls far from the tree”.

But in the end, it is the polished performances and superb presentation of the outstanding musicians who make up the BSBB, demonstrated in feature solos by masters of their instruments such as trumpeter Mark Du Rieu and drummer Noddy Brassington, that define the Blamey Street Big Band and keep audiences coming back for more. The BSBB’s next concert at The B is scheduled for May.

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