Joe Gransden
Sounds of the Big Band Era
Ferst Center at Georgia Tech

You don’t have to be a student to enjoy the first class offerings at the Ferst Center for the Performing Arts at Georgia Tech.  They play to the community, and while their productions are usually one-nighters, they’re well staged, with a fine auditorium, easy parking, and all the amenities.

Friday night they presented Joe Gransden and his 16 piece band, playing many of the numbers that were standards in the big band era starting in the 1930s.   Music played by groups such as Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and so many others.  The music plays on to this day.

Gransden’s band has a full brass section as well as reeds, along with percussion, bass and piano; and each and every one of the musicians is a first rate professional performer.  They closed out the first set with Louis Prima’s signature opus, Sing, Sing, Sing; which brought down the house at Carnegie Hall when it was played by Benny Goodman in his 1938 jazz concert.  Every player gets a riff, and every one does it first class.

If you like jazz and/or big band music and songs where you can actually understand the words being sung, then this is a band you want to see.  You can Google the band and you can also find them playing each first and third Monday at Café 290 in Sandy Springs.

Next up at the Ferst Center will be an amazing dance group called iLuminate.  They are unlike anything you have ever seen before.  The show will be Thursday, 17 November and you can get full info and tickets at Arts.Gatech.edu