A jazz band is bringing joy to people visiting a shopping centre in Stroud. Jazz Friday are a group of young and old band musicians who perform all over the South West, and more recently at the Five Valleys Shopping Centre in Stroud town centre.
The band was founded by Ian Davies and his late friend John Oglethorpe, 68, who decided to start a band after learning the saxophone as a retirement project in 2009. Davies, 78, says ‘We weren’t good enough to be in the rest of a band so we thought we’d form our own. My ambition was always to be the worst player in the band. There’s a little bit of rivalry. There’s quite a few bands like this in the area, so we compete for gigs.’
When asked why he and Oglethorpe chose jazz, Davies said ‘It was very popular music back in the 50s and very early 60s. I used to love it. I never thought I’d play it, I used to love just going to gigs and listening to it. The principles we had were to play as well as we could, and to have fun. We’re never going to be serious, never going to make any money out of it. It’s just to have fun.’
The band’s name comes from the simple fact that they have always rehearsed on a Friday night, and it is typically made up of 20 musicians. The band treated shoppers to an eclectic mix of music that included Run Away Baby by Bruno Mars and the occasional Christmas song. The band rehearse at Brimscombe Social Centre and will be performing in Stroud at 2pm at Nailsworth Christmas Market on the 11th December and back in Five Valleys Shopping Centre on the 18th.
