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Artist
Mike Westbrook Brass Band
12+ albums
about
Mike Westbrook Brass Band was a band led by English jazz musician Mike Westbrook[/ artist]. The band started in the summer of 1973, when Phil Minton and Mike Westbrook assembled a street band for a festival in Bath, in the UK. The band began to work regularly and gradually other people interested in working in this framework joined permanently, most notably Kate Barnard (subsequently Kate Westbrook) who joined the group early on. The band added a permanent drummer in 1978. The Brass Band's performances combined a wide range of musical sources with jazz improvisation and elements of theatre and cabaret, Brecht/Eisler material, William Blake poems, built around the compositions and arrangements of Mike Westbrook. The band performed in a great variety of situations, from concert halls, cathedrals, theatres, clubs and pubs, to shopping centers, piers and park band-stands. They toured extensively in Britain, France, West Germany and Scandinavia, and played regularly in most other European countries notably Holland, Italy and Switzerland. In March 1977, the Mike Westbrook Brass Band, the avant-rock group Henry Cow, and folk singer Frankie Armstrong merged to form the Orckestra. The ensemble performed in London and several cities in Europe, their last concert being in Bordeaux, France, in May 1978. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.
