Five Star Swing are a tight, highly accomplished music outfit steeped in the magi of Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra and Shirley Bassey. The group are led by bandleader Chris Smith, who plays piano and trumpet. The group recently played a superb concert at Butterfly World in St. Albans to see through the last days of summer. Here the swing-o-meter was set to maximum.
The group produced a ‘Jazz Swing Spectacular’, serving up hits of yesteryear, from Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra. The music was fantastic, dynamic, and the timing faultless. The flow of dance numbers could not have been better.
This evening numbers with the theme of the moon featured strongly, including a tight rendition of Blue Moon. The song was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart back in 1934, and it has remained a popular standard ever since. Also featured in the set was the song Sinatra made his own – Fly Me to the Moon. In Sinatra’s original version, he was accompanied by Count Basie. The Five Star Swing version was played to musical perfection in the spirit of the original.
There were also some beautiful ballads; with Somewhere Over The Rainbow (music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg) being the outstanding one from the set, sung by the band’s prominent vocalist Simone. The song became Judy Garland’s signature tune.
Five Star Swing’s Chris Smith is a master of audience interaction and the set list, especially in the second half, brought the audience to the dance floor and, most importantly, kept them dancing, foot stomping and jiving away.
The venue – Butterfly World – is a super visitor attraction and source of education about butterflies. The center collects and breeds butterflies from the tropics and from the UK. The aim, especially with the UK species, is conservation. The facility was profiled on Digital Journal back in 2012.
