How many concerts could you stand in one afternoon? Before August I’d have said two, perhaps three; that four would have my backside numb and five would see my mind wandering. Well, apparently I would have been wrong, and I can actually manage six: that’s how many sets the Pershore audience enjoyed and—despite the seniority of most patrons present—things were livelier by the end than in the beginning.
Pershore Jazz Festival used to be a three-day affair, with camping on the local college’s sports field and food served in its refectory until the small hours. Sadly, since reopening after COVID, the college has decided that it no longer wants to host the campers and caravaners who travelled from all over the UK—up to 750 people per day—so the festival committee had to find another way.
In 2022 a longstanding member, the late Keith Nichols, came up with an ambitious one-day programme cramming six gigs into a single summer afternoon. Now in its fourth year, the compressed jazz festival still manages to near-fill Pershore theater Number 8, with its two hundred-odd seats, from lunchtime to late evening.
And with a line-up like this one, there’s little wonder. For a tiny Worcestershire town unknown to me until last year, Pershore pulls in the stars. In 2025 this included Michael McQuaid, the Australian reedman extraordinaire who has made London his home. Joining him in the program were Vitality Five bandmate and percussion supremo Nicholas D Ball, renowned trumpeter Harry Evans (of The Forest Hill Owls, Louisiana Rhythm Kings etc.) and—most excitingly to me—American songbird Elise Roth (with her Harvard Squares).
I’ve been a huge fan of the vocalist, lyricist, actress and comedienne ever since I first reviewed her work back in 2022. I’ve followed her career, been privileged to interview her twice, and now I’d be seeing her perform live. (I could have gone to see her in London but, as a Northerner, I’m morally opposed.) As it turned out, I even got the chance to chat with her over coffee—and it turns out that meeting your heroes is sometimes fine.
But what about the location? Is Pershore worth a visit? In a word, definitely: it’s a charming little town of mostly Georgian (mid-18th to mid-19th-century) architecture, on the banks of the picturesque River Avon. It has a pretty park with a thousand-year-old abbey, swooping around the gothic belltower of which visitors might spot the world’s fastest animal: the peregrine falcon.
Arriving around noon, we began our festival with a look in and picnic beside said abbey, before wandering into Vale Vinyl Records, and on up the high street. This boasts plenty of nice pubs, restaurants and cafés—most of which we’ve now sampled and any of which we can recommend. It’s a more civilised alternative to the standard festival food truck, with options to drink and dine in cosy lounges, sunny terraces or shady gardens.
We took our seats at Number 8 just before 2 pm, for the beginning of an afternoon program of three sets. This began with a “Tour of the Duchy” guided by Evans (trumpet), with help from Ball (percussion), David Horniblow (reeds), Dave Shulman (reeds), Graham Hughes (trombone), Martin Litton (piano), Thomas Langham (banjo/guitar), and Malcolm Sked (bass/tuba).
Their repertoire celebrated Ellington’s small combo music, a chronologically-arranged collection of his hits beginning in 1926 with “Flaming Youth”, terminating with “Downtown Uproar” in 1938. Each tune had been painstakingly transcribed from particular sides—their “Black and Tan Fantasy” was, Evans pointed out, a new notation of the Victor side rather than the OKeh version they played last year.
Seated half way up the raked seating, we had a fantastic view of every musician. It was fascinating to watch Ball at the back, his drumming style shifting from syncopated whacks of the wood block and two-handed manipulation of a single cymbal (in “Jubilee Stomp,” for instance) to a steadier bass-drum-and-hi-hat pattern (e.g. “Rexatious”) that would become the driving force behind swing music.
We didn’t have to wait long for Roth, who made a guest appearance to sing “Don’t Cry When He’s Gone.” Sadly, microphone issues meant we didn’t quite get to hear the first verse, but happily it was the one technical slip experienced all day.
Throughout this fifty-minute opening set, Evans interspersed numbers with tidbits about Ellington’s career and collaborators such as Rex Stewart and Juan Tizol. This set a pattern for the remaining sessions, which became unofficial TED Talks featuring almost as much info and anecdote as they did music. I’m not complaining: with six such sets to listen to, it was as well to give the tapping toes a rest between tunes.
Following a ten-minute break we returned to the auditorium, where vocalist Cia Tomasso led Mike Soper (trumpet), McQuaid (reeds), Fraser Urquhart (piano), Martin Wheatley (guitar), Hughes (bass), and Joe Dessauer (drums) though fifty minutes of tributes to both Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. For a petite English rose, Tomasso captured the sounds of these African American icons incredibly well—her vocal styling not quite an impersonation, but an impressive homage.
Her repertoire began with lesser-known sides by these two titans, including “Little Old Fashioned Music Box,” “All My Life,” and “Say It With A Kiss.” The multitalented songstress had also arranged each number and conducted the band throughout, leading them into choruses and codas, and praising them at one point for sightreading a last-minute addition so flawlessly. Even Soper—who looked unreasonably displeased with everything he played—couldn’t help but smile.
It was during “Somebody Nobody Loves” that I twigged just why Michael McQuaid gets around. His playing is some of the smoothest, most delightfully dynamic I’ve ever heard. Switching seamlessly from clarinet to soprano and baritone saxes, he played each with both lace-like delicacy and the force of a tsunami—no wonder he seems to be every bandleader’s favorite sideman.
Later on, Tomasso treated her audience to some favorites by each of her muses, including “Love Me or Leave Me” (with the rarely-heard verse), “I Cover the Waterfront,” and “I’ll See You In My Dreams.” The last of these featured some particularly good solos from Soper, McQuaid, Urquhart and Wheatley—if only Hughes and Dessauer had got a turn, the result would have been perfection.
Rounding off the afternoon were the Forest Hill Owls, led by Chris Lowe (trombone). As with most of the other sets, their faithfully transcribed pieces included lesser-known composers and deep cuts, making the day a rewarding one for jazz casuals and hardcore nerds alike. Opener “King Porter Stomp” gave way to “Broadway Rose” and “What’d You Do,” the latter with a rarely-heard piano coda. “The White Ghost Shivers” was another tour-de-force by McQuaid, whose clarinet made some delightfully eerie tones, after a reed swap.
The band’s “Royal Garden Blues” featured Ball on the bock-a-da-bocks: a sort of cymbal-castanet hybrid clapped in one hand and tapped with a stick in the other. It was another fascinating glimpse into the evolution of jazz percussion, and the sort of performance that makes Ball—no doubt sweating through his double-breasted suit by this point—a stalwart of stage and screen.
“Josephine” and “Feelin’ No Pain” got a decidedly aged audience jiving in their seats and, after taking a couple of sets to warm up, listeners rewarded the players with rapturous applause and approving shouts after every number. We even got the night’s only drum solo in “Cuckoo Blues”—a blinder, even if it was only four bars. As the stalls finally began to rock, the proceedings broke for dinner and we retired to the Angel pub for a cooling pint.
Early evening brought the day’s star attraction (for me, anyway). After the briefest meeting with Roth (who is as lovely as she is talented), we sat down to watch her lead her Harvard Squares through an hour-long celebration of songwriting royalty. Again, the focus was on the lesser-known composers and songs—but that didn’t mean we weren’t treated to some bangers.
We got raucous renditions of “The Trolley Song” and “You Gave Me the Gate and I’m Swinging,” plus a version of “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön” sung in Yiddish. (“A lot of what we’re going to play is by Jewish composers, because we wrote the most. You’re welcome.”) Roth’s “Can’t We Be Friends” was inspired by the Ella and Louis side, weaving in elements of each idol’s iconic vocal style, without making a pastiche of it. And the chanteuse’s intro—explaining the song’s origins in a ten-year affair between composers Kay Swift and George Gershwin—was as funny as the performance was beautiful.
Players Soper, Hughes, Shulman, McQuaid, Wheatley, Urquhart, Evans and Dessauer were easily Roth’s equals throughout, Wheatley picking some delightful Manouche melodies and McQuaid delivering belting back-to-back baritone solos which I swear almost exploded him.
I could keep gushing about Roth—a woman who, I’m convinced now more than ever, is a reincarnation of the omnitalented Martha Raye—but I’m running out of column inches. Suffice to say that her “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” brought gasps of delight from the people around me, who whispered to one another that she was “better than Judy Garland” and “the best jazz singer [they’ve] ever seen.” And having euthanized my ten-year-old cat the day before, I’ve no shame in admitting that “I’ll Be Seeing You” made me blub.
The fifth set had Thomas “Spats” Langham (guitar/banjo) leading his Royal Flush quartet of Horniblow, Litton, and Sked through forty minutes of toe-tapping trad and blues including “Happy Feet,” “A Bench in the Park,” and more. Tomasso provided guest vocals on “Miss Jenny’s Ball,” “Muddy Water,” and “Some of These Days,” but Spats—who seemed to warm up from cold while singing “Happy Feet”—blew me away with his superb vocal performance on “When Did You Leave Heaven?” (Apparently he used to sing it in local pubs as a boy.)
The grand finale saw many of the aforementioned players join forces, comprising a ten-piece radio band. The sensational climactic set saw Roth and real-life BBC broadcaster Jonathan Holmes co-host a simulated vintage broadcast à la Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby. It featured superb music (I’d stopped taking notes by this point) linked by artificial ads for fictional products, with a dollop of seaside sauciness which had the old dears rolling.
We emerged into the night physically and emotionally exhausted, our jazz bellies filled to bursting. But like one who overindulges at a buffet, I knew I’d be back for Pershore’s next musical mukbang in 2026. It’s a wonderful event—to learn more, see pershorejazz.org.uk. And if you still haven’t experienced Elise Roth, find her on Bandcamp pronto.
Dave Doyle is a swing dancer, dance teacher, and journalist based in Gloucestershire, England. Write him at davedoylecomms@gmail.com. Find him on Twitter @DaveDoyleComms.
