[Dixielandjazz] Bohem Ragtime JB 25th anniversary concert, 1300 people

[Ittzés Tamás]

Dear Listmates,

I hate to say that we have done something great but this time I have to
say that we indeed did a great concert at the 25th anniversary of our
Bohem Ragtime Jazz Band. We filled Hungary's most prominent concert
hall, the Palace of Arts in Budapest, we had 1300 people in the
audience. We had lots of swing dancers, charleston dancers and tap
dancers, a few guest musicians and Steven Mitchell from Los Angeles.
Steven is an icon among lindy hoppers, he brought Frankie Manning back
into spotlight. (Frankie was the originator of lindy hop and died at the
age of 95 last year). Anyway, it was NOT a concert, it was a very
precisely designed gala evening, a show that even contained American
documentary clips from the 1930's. Everybody said, it was great (best
concert of the last 15 years and such opinions) we had to give 4 encores
and they did not want to let us go. And LOTS of young people in the
audience, too. Well, 4-500 youngsters out of 1,300 sounds pretty good.

The hall itself is huge, the stage is huge, the screen above the stage
(for the projector) is 10,5x7 metres. The stage is 12x18 metres, the
hall is 25 metres high. 3 story-auditorium if you are interested to see
pictures, this is the home page of the place: www.mupa.hu

I wish you could have been there. I really feel that we did something
really good for OKOM tonight. It was an awful lot of work, evenb more
than I could have imagined but it paid back. (Not financially as we
could have broken even or done a little profit IF there had been no
guest star, no live pictures on the screen, no 5 cameras, no sound
recording, no director etc. but I wanted it to be really professional. I
think it was great so this time I am almost satisfied and I feel that we
proud of our work. Sorry for this "self-ad", I just wanted to let you
know :-) I hope, you don't mind.

Tamas Ittzes
Bohem Ragtime Jazz Band
Kecskemet, Hungary
www.bohemragtime.com