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| Leisa Keen - Ian McLean and the Blamey Street Big Band |
Conducted by Ian McLean – Lead vocals: Leisa Keen – Backing vocals: Ashleigh Harris
Music arranged by Andrew Hackwill.
Piano: Don Lee – Guitar: Col Bernau – Bass: Peter McDonald -Drums: Derrick Brassington
Saxes/Reeds: Andrew Hackwell, Tanya Kiermaier, Joshua Hackwill,
Mia Blazevski, Sophia Hadjimichael, Bee Bailey, Amanda Macfarlane, Greg
Barnwell.
Trumpets: Mark Du Rieu, Peter Levan, Matthew Johnston, Mike
Hauptmann.
Trombones: Bronwen Mackenzie, Caitlyn Bool, Paul Trezise,
Fliss Boxall.
The B -Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, May 24th,
2025.
Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS
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| Leisa Keen - Ian McLean and the Blamey Street Big Band |
The Blamey Street Big Band may well have achieved a world first with its innovative concert which drew a large audience to the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre.
In his opening remarks jovial musical director and conductor
Ian McLean was at pains to point out that this would definitely not be a
tribute show but rather a big band extravaganza with which the Blamey Street
Big Band would celebrate the music of ABBA.
It would do this by performing
twenty-one of their songs but re-imagined in the style of some of the great swing
bands of the Forties and Fifties, and notably, every one of these songs had
been musically re-arranged by band member, Andrew Hackwill.
Hackwill’s imaginative musical arrangement have always been
a feature of the Blamey Street Big Band’s concerts, but this was the first time
that he had undertaken the task of creating the musical arrangement for its entire
concert.
Imagine I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do as it might have
been played by the Glen Miller Band, ABBA’s
great break-up song, The Winner Takes It All as it might have been
interpreted by any of the Cotton Club singers or Take A Chance On Me
with a Bo Diddley beat.
All were featured in this intriguing concert which commenced
with their ever-popular Mamma Mia, following which each song was
introduced by either McLean or vocalist Leisa Keen, taking turns in sharing
intriguing facts about ABBA’s songs or Hackwill’s inventive arrangements.
Who knew that Neil Sedaka had a hand in writing the English
lyrics for Ring Ring ? That SOS
was really about Morse code, so Hackwill managed to embed the song’s title in
Morse code into his arrangement, and the sounds of honeybees into his re-imagining
of Honey Honey, the last song the group
wrote in Swedish. Or that the royalties for their song Chiquitita raised
$5000,000 for UNISEF?
Although most of Hackwill’s arrangements included superb vocals
by Leisa Keen and backing vocalist Ashleigh Harris, their work was particularly
highlighted in a pretty arrangement of I’ve Been Waiting For You.
There were also two songs arranged specifically for musical
instruments. The first, Slipping
Through My Fingers as a haunting solo showcasing trombonist Bronwen McKenzie,
and the other, I Wonder, a little-known song written for a projected mini-musical
The Girl With The Golden Hair, here, as a beautiful flugelhorn solo for Mark Du
Rieu.
Other members of the band were highlighted in feature solos
embedded in the arrangements throughout the concert together with too many
other delightfully gossipy titbits to share here.
Suffice to tell that this hugely enjoyable concert was meant
to end with a cracking arrangement of Waterloo, the song with which ABBA
won the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest. However, the audience wasn’t going to let
it get away without an encore. They obliged with a final Hackwill original, a
medley of Hasta Manana and So Long.
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| Ian McLean (R) and the Blamey Street Big Band take a bow. |
