Music / Blamey St Big Band Swings Disney. At the Harmonie German Club, June 1. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

Donning Mickey and Minnie Mouse headgear, the musos of the Blamey St Big Band celebrated the 2023 centenary of the Disney name in a night of fun.

Natalie Dajski, normally the deputy music director of the Royal Military College Band, took the baton just for this concert from musical director Ian McLean for a show altogether I predict will be reprised in the near future.

The audience certainly got its money’s worth, with 22 numbers from Disney films and stage, an extraordinary 16 of which were sung by vocalist Leisa Keen, who had also arranged four of the songs.

Dajski wisely chose a more or less chronological approach, beginning with the Song of the South from 1946 and Mickey Mouse Club from 1955, the latter inspiring the audience to spell out the words “M I C K E Y M O U S E” in song.

Then it was time for Keen to turn the Seven Dwarves’ song Heigh-Ho into swing, and we discovered that at the 1939 Oscars ceremony, Walt Disney was given one large and seven “dwarf” statuettes.

Notably, many of the evening’s numbers chosen have become jazz and popular standards, including When You Wish Upon A Star, originally sung by Jiminy Cricket in the 1940 film Pinocchio.

We also heard that many famous actors-singers had voiced the early Disney characters, such as singer Peggy Lee, whose songs He’s A Tramp and All The Cats Join In [the cool cats, not the feline kind] the band played.

But it was Louis the Monkey’s song I Wanna Be Like You from The Jungle Book that stole the show before interval, as Louis became quite literally “the king of swing.”

The second half of the show leap into the1990s, with Beauty and the Beast by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman and later, Friend Like Me, immortalised by Robin Williams as the genie in Aladdin.

Keen and Dajski traced the succession of favourite Disney composers, including Elton John and Tim Rice, whose Can You Feel The Love Tonight was another example of a show-tune becoming a standard.

We also heard of changes at Disney as animation was replaced by live action and of Disney’s increasing acquisition of other companies.

Illustrating Dajski’s praise for the way Disney had expanded some of our geographical horizons, the band struck up a lively Mexican note with We Don’t Talk About Bruno from Encanto, 2021, allowing stirring solos for Bronwen Mackenzie on trombone and Andrew Hackwill who, on alto sax, had dominated the evening with his magnificent playing.

A slight tweak to the chronological order saw a flashback to the number Under the Sea, also by Menken and Ashman, from the 1989 animation of The Little Mermaid, before Dajski took the band back to The Lion King for its encore.