Vintage jazz aficionados will have the opportunity to enjoy the artistry of trumpeter Mal Jennings who will be in focus in a concert on October 26, 7.30 p.m. Mal Jennings is a leading name in Perth, Australia, and leads the Mal Jennings Jazz Ambassadors playing regularly at the Perth Jazz Club. The concert is presented by Mount Lavinia Hotel and will happen at the new clubhouse grounds of CR & FC, in collaboration with Jazz Unlimited and CR & FC.
Winner of the Original Tunes competition at the Australian Jazz Convention in the years 1994, 1995, 2005 and 2015, Mal Jennings will be accompanied by a leading jazz pianist Kumar de Silva and his group Jazz in Focus augmented by Brass Ensemble.
The name, Mal Jennings, may be unfamiliar to music lovers in Sri Lanka, but a spool back of his music career will reveal that his popularity is well established in the music industry in Australia. He started learning piano at the age of 11 and completed Grade 7 Piano with honours in 1961. As it always happens, when he was young, the desire to commence a musical career saw him join a piano and drum duo, playing Cornet with them at many small gigs in and around Ballarat.
 Mal Jennings |
But, Traditional jazz was his passion, which steered him to form the Ballarat Jazz Messengers and release three discs. From then on, his band got the opportunity to play the theme for a children’s hourly TV show on Channel 6. But the urge to spread Traditional jazz saw Mal Jennings run Sunday afternoon jazz concerts at his Coffee Lounge ‘Gallery 321’ at which bands around Australia clamoured to be featured. Mal Jennings’ achievements in his musical career are many, too many to record here. But suffice it to say that Mal Jennings and his trumpet sound is synonymous with vintage jazz and he believes in the thought, ‘why consign historic jazz to its frozen existence on records?’
Pianist Kumar de Silva needs no introduction to our music scene. His group, Jazz in Focus will accompany Mal Jennings, augmented by Brass Ensemble.
What exactly have you worked out for the program of the concert?
“The concert will open with modern jazz played by Jazz in Focus, headed by me. The other members are Dulip Gnanakan on bass, Rodney van Heer on sax and Shiraaz Nooramith playing drums. The vintage and Dixieland jazz by Mal Jennings will be with the Brass Ensemble, as well.
Coming back to Mal Jennings, in Perth, Mal Jennings Jazz Ambassadors has released a compilation CD of jazz, played over the years from 1967. Like he says “Am currently playing in the Perth Lyons Club Big Band and the ‘Gamnut Stompers’ as well as with my own band at the Perth Jazz Club and also playing with Phil Hatton’s band at Rodney’s Bait and Tackle bar”.
Jazz lovers in Sri Lanka eagerly await his concert.