After a stellar gig at last month's Brisbane Big Band Festival, Barefoot Brass were asked by the Brisbane Jazz Club to headline their own night, which band members Corey Warwick and Jazz Morrison are thrilled about.
“We were invited to play at the Brisbane Big Band Festival [that’s held] in May every year… and then we got about ten charts of music, which was really good, given to us,” Corey says. “[Then] they offered us a potential night of our own gig.”
Corey says their contemporary sound comes from the diversity of their musicians, which helps them engage with new audiences. “We’ve got some very talented individuals in our band who have studied at the [Queensland] Conservatorium, and they were able to bring their personal, musician skills into the band,” Corey adds.
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“We arrange a lot of our own music as well, so for instance we’ve got ‘Crazy In Love’ by Beyonce, which is something we’ve recently added to our repertoire. One of our most recent [successes] is that we’ve been able to adapt and create it for ourselves.
“I think our youngest musician has just turned 18,” he continues. “We’ve got mums and dads in the band; we’ve got a whole range of age demographics in the band as well, as well as professional people who are working professional jobs, [as well as] students.
“When we started to form the band we didn’t just want to be a band that played music, we really wanted to live and breathe it and get involved with the songs, and I think that’s what we do through our own interpretation of each piece of music we play.
“We’ve been given feedback several times from different people and in particular the [Brisbane] Jazz club. We look at a piece of music and say ‘right, how can we adapt it to make it our own?’ And that’s what we really like, we really do look at a piece of music and go ‘right, how can we interpret this and change this to suit our band and what sort of sound we want to portray?’.”
Jazz says the contemporary style is also a blessing for the band as well. “It keeps us interested, too. I couldn’t imagine it if we were always playing the same stuff over and over again, it would get boring for us. Whereas, I find each person is being challenged in different ways, with different types of music genres… It’s really good to be challenged in different areas in music, so I think all of the band members have the same philosophy.
“We’re all pretty easy going, fun-loving kind of people,” she adds, “so I think that’s important and I think that comes down to our presence on stage. People [react positively] to our corny jokes, our different music… We don’t have a specific niche market and a lot of different people would appreciate our music.
“We go from The Beatles to Beyonce, so if you’re born in the '50s or you’re born in the '00s [you’ll like it]. There’s music for every type and every generation, and also [music for] all different genres. We do Coldplay as well, which is a whole different kettle of fish, but we bring brass into it. So I think anyone with a love of brass will love any of our music, but then because we do all those different styles anyone can adapt and enjoy it as well.”
Barefoot Brass play the Brisbane Jazz Club June 19.