It’s always good to come across emergent talent, and when the talent is as striking as young Andy Schumm, the pleasure is all the greater. Your Festival Director first came across this fine cornettist in Racine, Wisconsin at a Bix affair – Andy was looking to sit in wherever he could. A few years on, and he is playing regularly in one of Chicago’s leading classic jazz bands and leading his own outfit at the Bix Memorial Festival in Davenport, Iowa. A self-confessed Bix fanatic, we have set him up with an International gang who can more than meet his musical aspiration: the excellent young Josh Duffee (U.S.A.) on drums, Jacob Ullberger on banjo & guitar, Norman Field on clarinet and saxes, Paul Munnery on trombone, Martin Litton/Jeff Barnhart on piano and Frans Sjöström on bass sax. Together, these chaps will take you back to those six all-too-short years of 1924 to 1930 which cover Bix’s recording career.

Nominated joint “Band of the Year” at the 2005 and 2006 Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Festivals in Davenport, Iowa, this band was formed back in 2002 to play jazz and hot dance music of the twenties and thirties, with a special emphasis on the work of the crooners. Of course, if you are going to do this sort of thing, only one name springs to mind to handle the “with vocal refrain” chores, and that’s Spats Langham, the band’s nominal leader (not to mention his skills on guitar, banjo and ukulele). And after pianist Jeff Barnhart, one instrumentalist springs to mind with equal alacrity – that master of early white jazz reed styles, Norman Field. These three, aided and abetted by Mike Durham on trumpet, Paul Munnery on trombone, Nick Ward on drums, John Carstairs Hallam on string bass and Swedish bass saxist Frans Sjöström make up the Rhythm Boys, who now have four CDs out on the WVR label.