Happy New Year!!

This month sees Bryan Davis performing the last few dates of the Christmas With The Rat Pack UK tour. This will definitely be the last UK/European stint with the Rat Pack for a while. The show is on hiatus, except in the USA, until sometime later in the year, by which time Bryan should have finally made the move to New York. You can catch Bryan playing Lead Trumpet with the Rat Pack Big Band at the St Georges Hall in Bradford on the 2nd, the Grimsby Auditorium on the 3rd and the Liverpool Philharmonic on the 5th. Please stop by the Stage Door and say hello if you make it to any of these shows.

The rest of January will be spent subbing a few shows on Cinderella; the pantomime at the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford. Bryan will also be playing with the Pasadena Roof Orchestra at their concert in Leeds on the 18th. Other than that, Bryan will be catching up on real life at home! Following 38 weeks away on the road in 2008, as well as numerous other gigs, that should make for a welcome change! However, don’t be afraid to get in touch if you need a Trumpet player for your band!

Bryan is available, as ever, to teach Trumpet lessons whether at home or on the road. He is also available as Clinician and/or Guest Artist to come and work with School/Youth/College Bands. He was pleased to perform with the Jazz Band I at Fullerton College in Fullerton, California back in October 2008. He is pencilled in to coach the GCDYO Swing Band in Grimsby, UK in January this year. There will be a ‘Teaching’ page added to the site shortly with details about Bryan’s Educational activities. For more information in the meantime, please use the Contact page to get in touch.

Looking ahead, there are already some interesting gigs in Bryan’s diary for 2009. The Rat Pack - Live at the Sands US Tour starts again in late February. The show will be visiting Louisville KY, Dallas TX, Schenectady NY, Tampa Bay FL, Portland OR and Costa Mesa CA before the end of April. There are also 3 tours planned with the LACJO during 2009. There are Spring and Autumn tours in Austria and then, in late October, the band should be travelling to China to perform at the 11th China Shanghai International Arts Festival. There is a News item with more details about all of that. There is also a date with Ryan Quigley’s Big Band at the Glasgow Jazz Festival in June. Ryan is a fine Trumpet player who is well known in the Scottish Jazz scene. His band is likely to include such luminaries as Nigel Hitchcock (alto), Mark Nightingale (tbn) and possibly even Wayne Bergeron and Roger Ingram (tpts). Should be a lot of fun! Between those confirmed dates and Bryan’s emigration to the USA, it promises to be a busy year for him, so please check back here often for more news!

A highlight of 2008 was Bryan’s trip to Austria in May with Thomas Gansch and his band. The first concert was at the Schagerl Brass Festival and part of that concert is featured on the Schagerl Brass Festival 2008 DVD. One of the tracks has found it’s way on to YouTube and we present it here for your enjoyment.

Bryan is spending the festive season back in the UK, primarily fulfilling dates on the Christmas with the Rat Pack UK tour. He will be in Glasgow, Manchester, Gateshead, Birmingham, Sheffield, Harrogate, Dundee and Hull between the 1st and the 18th. The rest of the month will be spent playing the usual round of Christmassy gigs (functions and pantomime deps!) and celebrating with friends and family!

In addition to playing the shows, Bryan is available to teach private lessons, whether he’s on the road or at home! If this is of interest to you then please check the Calendar to find out when he’s visiting your city, then visit the Contact page and get in touch so we can set it up. Given his increasing involvement in education, there will be a Teaching page added to the site shortly, with further details about Private lessons as well as Clinics/Workshops.

Following the difficulties with the website at the end of October, we are pleased to say that it is more or less up and running again. The last thing to re-add is Bryan’s Discography - this will rematerialise before long and feature the addition of a DVD of NYJO that was recently released, recorded at the Proms back in around 2000. More details when the page returns!

Looking ahead to 2009, there are already some interesting gigs in Bryan’s diary, including an Austrian tour with LACJO, the continuation of the Rat Pack - Live At The Sands US Tour and a date with Ryan Quigley’s Big Band at the Glasgow Jazz Festival. Ryan is a fine Trumpet player who is well known in the Scottish Jazz scene. His band is likely to include such luminaries as Nigel Hitchcock (alto), Mark Nightingale (tbn) and possibly even Wayne Bergeron and Roger Ingram (tpts). Should be a lot of fun! Between those confirmed dates and Bryan’s emigration to the USA, it promises to be a busy year for him, so please check back here often for more news!

Happy Holidays!

This month, Bryan is continuing The Rat Pack - Live At The Sands US National Tour. He will be visiting Omaha NE, Oklahoma City and Tulsa before returning to the UK to play many of the dates on the Christmas With The Rat Pack UK Tour in December and January.

During October, Bryan was in the USA also. Besides playing Rat Pack shows in Salt Lake City, UT and Tempe, AZ, he also spent a week or so in Los Angeles. Whilst the trip there was primarily for personal reasons(!) he also had the tremendous pleasure of appearing as Guest Artist with the Jazz Band at Fullerton College in Fullerton, CA. The concert was a lot of fun and seemed to be a tremendous success. Bryan wishes to thank Jazz Director Bruce Babad, as well as the fine players in the band, for inviting him out to play with them. We hope to have some audio/video clips up on the site before long.

Speaking of the website, we should point out that following some problems during a recent software update, much of it was accidentally deleted! The astute return visitor may notice the abscence of several features. We are working hard to replace them and hope to resume full service before long! In the meantime, the site is a little more streamlined but most of the important information is still available. Keep checking for regular updates over the next few weeks.

Bryan had a fantastic trip to Austria in September, to play the first concert with the newly formed Lower Austrian Concert Jazz Orchestra. It was a great concert and the band sounded fantastic! There is a tour planned for March ‘09 - more details about that in due course. We should also have some audio and video footage from that concert soon.

In the meantime, please continue to enjoy this video from Bryan’s earlier Austria trip at the end of May, playing with Thomas Gansch and his band; Gansch & Roses. The band is playing Thomas’ Bill Chase tribute - “Der Rock Des Trompeters” - from the gig at Porgy & Bess in Vienna.

This month sees Bryan returning to The Rat Pack - Live From Las Vegas, following the tour’s summer break. They kick off in Belfast, at the marvellous Grand Opera House, on Monday the 8th. The previous weekend Bryan will be performing with Mark Gillbanks and his fine orchestra for a couple of events. September also sees Rat Pack dates in Sunderland and Southport.

Perhaps more importantly, this month also marks the inaugural concert with the Lower Austria Concert Jazz Orchestra, to which Bryan was recently appointed as Lead Trumpet. Bryan will be visiting Austria twice in September, first to rehearse with the Orchestra and then to perform in the concert at the St. Pölten Jazz Festival on the 27th. The program is challenging but looks like a lot of fun; it’s entitled “Murdering The Classics” and features, amongst other works, the Stan Kenton version of Bernstein’s West Side Story.

Looking ahead to October, Bryan expects to be returning to the USA with the Rat Pack US National Tour. Visa permitting, he will be visiting Salt Lake City, Utah and Tempe, Arizona.

In any of the locales he visits, Bryan is always available to teach Trumpet Lessons; something he’s been doing a lot of lately! If you’re interested in organising a lesson, please check the Calendar to see when he’s nearby and get in touch to set it up.

Bryan had a fantastic trip to Austria at the end of May, playing with Thomas Gansch and his band; Gansch & Roses. The first concert they played, at the Schagerl Brass Festival, was broadcast live online by TheMusicPage.com. We’re promised that, at some stage, highlights from that concert will be made available on their site. In the meantime, please enjoy this video of the band playing Thomas’ Bill Chase tribute - “Der Rock Des Trompeters” - from the gig at Porgy & Bess in Vienna.

This month sees the end of the Rat Pack Tour for the time being. The show is playing in Brighton, Norwich and Bournemouth before it wraps up for the summer.

Bryan will be playing most of these dates but will be taking time out from the weekend in Norwich to head out to the beautiful La Perelada castle in Spain to play a casino show with Chris Mann and Mark Adams who are presenting their “Frank and Dean” show.

The day after the end of the Rat Pack tour, Bryan will be playing at the Manchester Jazz Festival with sensational Latin-Jazz Big Band La Gran Descarga. He played a handful of gigs with them last summer and it’s really a great band. They are playing the first half of a double bill with Roberto Fonseca at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. For fans of Latin-American music, it’ll be a great night - come out and say hello!

For the remainder of the month of July, Bryan will be doing various other gigs including a Rat Pack event at the Liverpool Echo Arena and also playing with the fabulous Syd Lawrence Orchestra. Confirmed dates for August include gigs with The Real Macaws, 2 days in Glasgow playing “The Motown Show”, a weekend with the Glenn Miller Orchestra UK and an appearance at the “Jazz In The City” festival in Leeds with Steve Parry’s “Big Band from Hell”. You can check the Schedule for further details.

In addition to these gigs, Bryan will be available to teach trumpet lessons in the Leeds area. He will available until sometime in early September at which point he will be making a big move away from Leeds - more details about that later, once the timetable has been confirmed. If you’d like to study with Bryan, please don’t delay - you may not have the chance for that long! To set up a lesson, please get in contact and we’ll organise it.

Bryan had a fantastic trip to Austria at the end of May, playing with Thomas Gansch and his band; Gansch & Roses. We’ll add more news about it shortly. The first concert they played, at the Schagerl Brass Festival, was broadcast live online by TheMusicPage.com - highlights will be available soon on the site. We’ll link to them once they become available. In the meantime, please enjoy this video of the band playing Thomas’ Bill Chase tribute - “Der Rock Des Trompeters” - from the gig at Porgy & Bess in Vienna.