Big Time Swing!

Last year, Bobbe Big Band turned 10 years. To celebrate this, we recorded and released our first album called Big Time Swing!

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I caricatured our amazing solo singers Marie Nagenius and Carl-Johan Killeslätt, as well as our musical director (and dear friend) Robin “Bobbe” Hellström. I wanted a “retro feel” to this cover, to go with the swing music. The inspiration comes from cartoons of the 50s, whereas the actual music is mainly from the 30s and 40s, so it’s entirely wrong actually. 🙂

The reason the cover looks cool is entirely thanks to Alfred Beckman (another dear friend) and his bold graphic design. He picked the colors, designed our logo, designed the title and so on. As always, working with Alfred lifts the whole thing to heights that wouldn’t have been reached otherwise. Nice work man!

In fact, thanks to the cool cover (and the music), our CD is now sold through the hippest store of the hip, HepCat. There are still some copies left, so if you want a great swing record to dance to, go ahead and order your copy of Big Time Swing from HepCat!

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Yet another dear friend, Ted Johansson, shot the band picture. It’s from a concert with Swedish guitar legend Janne Schaffer last year. Thanks Ted for all your great pictures from that concert!

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Being part of this group has brought me so much joy and great musical experiences through the years. I’m looking forward to celebrating 20 years with you guys. Thanks!

LABS & LAK’s film concerts, 30 – 31 January 2010

30 – 31 January LABS (Lunds Akademsika Blåsarsymfonkiker/ Lund’s Academic Symphonic Wind Orchestra) and LAK (Lunds Akademiska Kör/ Lund’s Academic Choir) performed two concerts of film music, in the St Andreas Church in Malmö on Saturday, and in the assembly hall of Lund’s university on Sunday. The two ensembles together plus a number of soloists equaled at least 80 people on stage, maybe as much as 90. We played music from Lord of the Rings (Howard Shore) and Henry V (Patrick Doyle). The main composer of the weekend was John Williams. From his extraordinary repertoire we played Star Wars Saga, a medley of themes from the original trilogy, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List and Duel of the fates from Star Wars Episode I.

Williams is a living legend in the world of film scores. I’ve listened so much to his music through the years, but this was the first time I actually played it. I felt as excited as the little kid I saw in the audience who probably had never heard Star Wars live before. The way he marveled at the percussion section really made my day. Williams’s music, as well as the Star Wars films, is highly romantic, almost exaggeratedly romantic. I always loved exaggeration. Caricature for me is usually more real than realism. But that’s just me.

I listened to the complete scores for the original Star Wars trilogy at work all day today, since I wasn’t ready to leave that far away galaxy just yet. These clips are from our sunday concert in Lund. Enjoy!

BBB plays LatinSwing @ Malmöfestivalen

Bobbe Big Band plays at Malmöfestivalen, Saturday from 10 pm (22.00) to midnight and beyond. The place is Swingtältet (The Swing Tent), which you’ll find at Södertull, entrance free of charge of course! We have some great guest stars: Ola Åkerman and Ola Nordquist on trombones, Niklas Fredin on trumpet and song, and Ralph Berger Torres on more percussion instruments than you can name. BBBs LatinSwing concerto also features singer CJ Lennartsson, our smooth singing friend from the All That Jazz concerts. We’ll give you a sneak peak of this autumn’s big BBB concert project, in which CJ will interpret pop and rock classics.

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This poster – probably the greatest BBB ever had – was made by Alfred Gunnarsson. Check out his blog and portfolio at Salmiak Media. He made it for the first time we played the concert, in April at Babel in Malmö. Two of the organisers of Malmöfestivalen were in the audience and offered us to play in Swingtältet. Welcome to the party on Saturday!

Blues and Gospel 11/5

This spring’s main thematic concert for Bobbe Big Band is a blues and gospel concert fronted by guest saxophone soloist Fredrik Kronkvist and our faithful solo singer Ulrika Orre. Blues and gospel are closely related genres, like two sides of the same coin, so it’ll be interesting exploring the two back to back.

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This time we’ve rented the city hall of Lund to try to get away of people thinking we’re a “student band”, wich we’re not, actually. I made this poster to try to sell as many tickets as possible (and we really need to, to be able to pay the rent of the hall). Unfortunately I was too crap at the Adobe CS programs to make it really high resolution. It looks better on screen than in print, but there you go. I’ll try to do better next time.

I want to wish each and everyone of you out there a warm welcome to this very special concert at May 11, 1600 hours. I will hardly be able to play myself since I’ll be busy studying the golden tones of Fredrik Kronkvist’s amazing solo playing…

Check out http://www.fredrikkronkvist.com/movie_NEW3.html if you want to know more about this excellent musician.