Gillian Moore

There was prac­ti­cal­ly a full house at Lit­tle Carib The­atre in Wood­brook for Tony Paul's Evening of Jazz con­cert on Au­gust 19. The show of sup­port for Paul (An­tho­ny Woodroffe Jr), who staged the show to help fund fur­ther stud­ies in mu­sic, was tes­ta­ment to the fact that he has be­come one of the more pop­u­lar young sax­o­phone play­ers on the lo­cal jazz scene. He has adopt­ed the new moniker to dif­fer­en­ti­ate him­self from oth­er mu­si­cians with the same name-in­clud­ing his fa­ther, a vet­er­an mu­si­cian and mu­sic teacher. Paul se­lect­ed songs from some of his mu­si­cal in­flu­ences, and on the cast fea­tured guests who had worked with him along his jour­ney as a mu­si­cian.

Paul got a BA (Hons) in Jazz Stud­ies from Leeds Col­lege of Mu­sic in the UK. He has been ac­cept­ed to do his Mas­ter's in mu­sic at the pres­ti­gious in­sti­tu­tion, but needs to raise £12,000 for tu­ition fees. He is tak­ing a year to work, prac­tice and raise funds. At Sun­day's show, he was joined by a tal­ent­ed group of mu­si­cians, in­clud­ing Michael "Ming" Low Chew Tung on key­boards, Dean Williams on gui­tar, Joseph Mel­lville on trum­pet, David Richards on drums, Rod­ney Alexan­der on bass and James Fen­ton on per­cus­sion/con­gas. Paul stood at the front of the stage, sur­round­ed by his in­stru­ments: so­pra­no, al­to and tenor sax­o­phones, flute and clar­inet. Al­so fea­tured were pan mu­sic vet­er­an Ray Hol­man, vo­cal­ists Vaugh­nette Big­ford and Afiya Athill.

The first half of the show fo­cused on lo­cal com­posers, in­clud­ing Paul, El­la An­dall, Dean Williams and Hol­man. The pan pro played on his up­beat Bazodee, the airy Down the Ca­roni Riv­er, and Mem­o­ry of Your Smile, with Big­ford pour­ing out rich tones on vo­cals, as well as Paul's fast-paced Yeah, No, Maybe-which show­cased Alexan­der on a hot bass so­lo. Hol­man's mu­sic-in­deed his very pres­ence-raised the vibes in the dark­ened Roberts Street the­atre; as the au­di­ence swayed and bopped their heads in time. The se­lec­tions in the sec­ond half were by in­ter­na­tion­al com­posers, mak­ing for a more jazzy, funk-in­flu­enced, eclec­tic sound. It had been a big night, but on­ly one step in Paul's mu­si­cal jour­ney. He plans to stage fur­ther fundrais­ing events in the near fu­ture.