Frisco Jazz is all about the revival of the style of jazz popularised by the towering figures of the King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Johnny Dodds, Kid Ory and Lil Hardin in the halcyon days of New Orleans jazz in the 1920s.
Its revival in San Francisco on the West Coast of the USA in the 1940s inspired Australian jazz greats such as Graeme Bell and Frank Johnson, one of the founders of Noosa Jazz Festival and the Noosa Heads Jazz Club.
It has been a continuing feature of many of the Jazz Club’s monthly concerts and will be a special treat for traditional and classic jazz lovers at this year’s opening concert for the Noosa Jazz Festival at the Majestic, Pomona on Sunday 31 August at 1.30 pm.
Australian jazz began to bifurcate in the late 1940s into two distinct streams: modern styles aligned with bebop, cool jazz, and free jazz, and a “traditional” or Dixieland strand that consciously looked back to early New Orleans models. Access to 78-rpm recordings of King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton—smuggled home by servicemen and imported by collectors—ignited a grassroots revival dedicated to two-beat rhythms, polyphonic ensemble breaks, and “hot” frontline interplay.
Enjoy the high powered two trumpet ensemble with Steven Grant (trumpet), and Ian Smith (trumpet), backed by Chris Schnack (trombone), Paul Williams (clarinet & saxophone), John Reeves (piano), David Burrows (guitar), Rod Andrew (drums), Richard Stevens (sousaphone), as they present some of the extraordinary melodies created by these legends of early jazz.
To book your ticket, go to noosajazzclub.com