Let there be music

One of the advantages of Antibes is that it gets some of the musical overflow from the Juan les Pins Jazz Festival. A week ago, for instance, we heard the Glenelg Jazz Ensemble from Washington DC. This school band, with some of the kids really young, produced better playing than I have heard in years. They really knew how to swing, and their ponytailed conductor-flautist was no mean dancer either. The night before last, it was the turn of the Delft Studenten Corps band from Holland. They were technically flawless, and had a good line in vocals too. More importantly, they put on a fantastic show. They were dressed in rumpled DJs, complete with orange bowties (what else?) and Heineken braces. More than half of them, being blond, bore a worrying likeness to Boris Johnson. There were trombone quartets played with the feet, like a chorus line of Tiller girls, there was a clarinettist who played Balkan rhythms over Glen Miller, whilst suspended upside down, there was a drum solo played on the outsize pads of a barytone saxophone. They ended their set dispersed amongst the crowds in the Place Nationale, singing and playing a rowdy Dutch (drinking?) song. The only slightly dubious note was the presence of less-than-respectable looking photographers, who seemed to be trying to groom some of the little girls tempted to dance in front of the stage.