A French six piece band playing 1920s jazz, with plenty of grey hairs on show. The HAJB first appeared at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival 35 years ago, and are still going strong.
Tuba, piano, banjo cornet and a few clarinets and saxophones line up with some eccentric vocal contributions. Their musical style is conventional trad jazz, without surprises, but their style is unmistakably French and full of fun. Anyway, who wouldn't charmed by those accents?
Band leader Michel Bastide smoothly introduced proceedings, and got each number underway with a complicated set of foot tap signals. Everyone gets their chance to shine in solos, with tenor sax player Michel Bescont the best of the bunch for his imagination and fluency. And he's a decent singer too. The surprise was finding that the weakest link was, at times, Bastide himself, with a few duff notes creeping into his cornet solos.
Highlights included a lovely rendition of "The Very Sought of You" (say it with a French accent!), and when five band members vacated the stage leaving German pianist Martin Seck to give us a rousing boogie woogie version of the St Louis Blues.
A fun and nostalgic way to pass an hour.
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