Swing into Christmas with Down for the Count Orchestra
Swing into Christmas with Down for the Count Orchestra at The Stoller Hall, Manchester
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Swing into Christmas with Down for the Count Orchestra £46.50
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About the show
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: the 30-piece Down for the Count Swing Orchestra returns with its much-loved annual seasonal treat, Swing Into Christmas! Gather your loved ones for a joyful set of festive and non-festive classics as you’ve never experienced them before.
This is a Christmas spectacular like no other – the Down for the Count Swing Orchestra is one of the largest swing bands currently touring the UK. Directed by conductor and compère Mike Paul-Smith and featuring some of the UK’s top vocalists and instrumentalists, the acclaimed “big band with strings” recreates the sounds of Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland in a unique extravaganza of music, stories and on-stage camaraderie which has endeared the ensemble to audiences up and down the country year after year.
Audiences of all ages will be captivated by fresh arrangements of iconic songs such as Let It Snow, This Christmas, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year and New York, New York alongside many other favourites – all performed in authentic big-band-with-strings style.
The Down for the Count Swing Orchestra is one of the UK’s most highly-regarded vintage ensembles, having sold out numerous shows at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, The London Jazz Festival, Cadogan Hall and more.
Featuring - Down for the Count Orchestra
The Down for the Count Orchestra is a vintage orchestra which performs the music of Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Nat 'King' Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and many more.
The Down for the Count Orchestra is our largest line-up, and is an expanded version of our All-Stars Band - featuring a larger horn and rhythm section, and a luscious string section.
The result has been described by DownBeat magazine as "a sonic ride back to the sounds of Capitol Studios in the 1950s" - and a recent review of our tour said "you won't find a better interpretation of these golden tunes anywhere in the UK right now" (Stage Reviews).
The Orchestra performs faithful transcriptions of some of the greatest hits of the Swing Era, taking its main inspiration from the Capitol Studios recordings that bought Frank Sinatra, Nat 'King' Cole and Peggy Lee to worldwide fame, and the influential Ella Fitzgerald "Songbook" sessions, masterminded by Norman Granz.
Our show also explores the various ways jazz and swing musicians have involved strings in their music - so you might see and hear excerpts from the Charlie Parker With Strings albums, or recreations of classic tunes from the Tommy Dorsey or Harry James big bands of the 1940s (both of which involved strings).
We also breathe new life into jazz standards, with original arrangements and orchestrations written by our principal conductor Mike Paul-Smith and associate musical director Simon Joyner.
Above all, every song is performed with love and respect for the original artists, and the collective friendship of the musicians on stage rubs off on audiences who return to see the Orchestra over and over again.