Marsden Jazz Festival 2025

This is an international music festival that has been running since 1992, with HGS performing there since 1998. Throughout the whole weekend there were a range of pro-musician concerts, supported by a wide range of free performances all around the town of Marsden.

We performed our set during the Saturday lunchtime slot at the Bandstand in the Park to a large and supportive audience, and even the weather was lovely and sunny for a change! This year our 21 piece ensemble had almost half of the 21 band members new to the band, after the larger than normal annual turn-over of players leaving for university. In fact, we even started with a completely new rhythm section of Matthew Tillotson (drums), Will Thornton (bass) and Mehaan Roy (Guitar). Other newcomers included Sienna Xu and Linus Lightfoot, both in year 8.

We started our set with an energetic performance of ‘Soul Man’, featuring Ben McNally on vocals – his first time performing at the festival.  Also debuting with the band on vocals was y12 student Praise Nduka-Obiora, giving a super performance of ‘In the Midnight Hour’. Lily Stirk, Caitlin Tolan and Isobel Roberts once again sang a range of songs including Jazzman, Spooky and California Dreaming.  We had improvised solos from Lily Dillon, Arthur Dye, Harvey Cole and Helena & Mary Kernick, bringing that wonderful jazz atmosphere to our performance. Well done everyone!