There’s something decidedly classical, or at least classic, about the Down for the Count swing orchestra which tours the UK with the recreation of iconic repertoire from the giants of swing, big band, and the singers, composers and arrangers associated with this style.

I’ve decided to write about the orchestra, because it seems to me that this repertoire, some of it a century old, is now embedded within the twentieth century canon. Plus, the most recent concert I attended was to hear this orchestra in its summer tour of ‘Celebrating Nat King Cole’.

Whilst numerous composers were influenced by jazz generally, the sound-world of 1940s to 1950s can be found in the music of classical composers from that time. Igor Stravinsky famously composed his Ebony Concerto (1945) for Woody Herman’s band, and this is perhaps the best-known example. But there are other instances, such as when Ralph Vaughan Williams includes shadows of swing music, complete with saxophone and hints of drum kit, in the third movement of his Sixth Symphony (1947).

Down for the Count isn’t merely another tribute band. It seeks out the original orchestrations by composers and bandleaders such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and others. Often, the original orchestrations no longer exist, and so Down for the Count’s conductor, Mike Paul-Smith, and the associate conductor, Simon Joyner, have reconstructed these. The same is true for the orchestrations of arrangers such as, for example, Nelson Riddle, Gordon Jenkins, and Billy May, who worked with Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, and other well-known contemporaries.

The Down for the Count offer is, I would argue, an off-shoot of HIP (historically informed performance) which gained traction in classical music from, say, the 1970s and ‘80s onwards. Despite their concerts being popular and informal, they belie the fact that forensic musicology is at play here. To hear, live, the sumptuous and expansive sounds of a Riddle or Ellington arrangement, meticulously prepared and performed by 40 or so talented young musicians and vocalists, is a wonderful thing.

The great age of big band swing is now classic, and the Down for the Count team are ensuring that new and younger audiences can engage with this rich repertoire.