Keith Nichols

It’s been over 40 years since a complete programme of the music of Paul Whiteman has been heard in London. In 1974 Keith Nichols collaborated with Bix Beiderbecke expert Dick Sudhalter and presented Whiteman’s music. Now Nichols is back with a 26-piece orchestra and a programme that features jazz piano titan Nick Dawson, trumpet star Guy Barker and Thomas ‘Spats’ Langham.

Whiteman’s orchestra was the biggest thing in popular music in the 1920s and scored four number 1 hits in 1927, featuring the distinctive sound of Bix Beiderbecke on trumpet. The concert will feature many of these hits plus George Gershwin’s masterpiece, Rhapsody in Blue, which was commissioned by Whiteman in 1924 for a concert he presented, ‘An Experiment in Modern Music’.