On June 10, 2017 we’ll perform for our fourth year in a row at All Balboa Weekend! It is always an honor to be invited to perform at this long-running Balboa event that is home to what is essentially the world championships of Balboa. Our friends Michael Gamble and the Rhythm Serenaders are performing on Friday night and we’ll be the Saturday night band. We’ve also got a special surprise for you with guest vocalist Nick Williams, so don’t miss a moment of the live music at ABW!
If you like your Balboa events peppered with cats with laser beam eyes, dinosaurs, world-class instruction, and lots of foodie restaurants, join us for a fun, nerdy weekend of Balboa dancing and instruction at I Heart Balboa in Richmond, Virginia. The event runs September 2-4, 2016 and we’ll be performing at the Saturday night dance on September 3, 2016 – we are excited to be back to perform for their second year!
Dogtown Dance Theater
109 West 15th St
Richmond, VA
Time: 8:30 p.m. to midnight
Admission: For more information, visit the I Heart Balboa website.
The Mint Julep Quintet is excited to be a part of the Durham Art Guild’s Swing Into Spring on April 1, 2016, an event that highlights the visual arts community in Durham and is the first in a series of spring season arts events! Here’s more information from the Facebook invite:
“Join the Durham Art Guild and our partners, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Durham Arts Council, Art of Cool, Moogfest and American Dance Festival, as we kick-off and celebrate a full and exciting spring season of the arts in Durham.
In addition to highlighting the coming season of events, Swing into Spring attendees will dance to the swinging sounds of Mint Julep Jazz Quintet and enjoy food and beverages from local restaurants and breweries. Don’t miss this celebration and a chance to take home exclusive experiences and artwork created by local artists!
Come show your support for Durham’s continuously blooming and vibrant arts scene. Dress up in your favorite floral prints, most colorful clothes, or whatever gets you ready to Swing into Spring!
$50 VIP Early Access:
We are pulling out all the stops for our VIPs. Just $50 gets you an exclusive invite to our pre-party from 6:30-7:30pm featuring a live auction of amazing experiences. This ticket includes two complimentary drinks and light hors d’oeuvres. You will also have the opportunity to “Buy it NOW” in the silent auction before the full celebration kicks off at 7:30pm.
There are a limited number of VIP tickets so don’t wait!
$25 Let’s Celebrate:
Starting at 7:30pm, celebrate the arts in Durham with live swing music and swing dancing. Don’t worry, we will have instructors on hand for a quick lesson if you need a refresher. Your ticket also includes one free drink in case you need a little liquid courage before getting out on the dance floor. Bid on art created by local artists in our silent auction as well as many other great items donated by some of your favorite area hot spots.”
The whole event runs from 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. For more information and to get tickets, visit the event ticket website. We hope to see you there!
We are excited to be joining forces with Taste for the Grand Taste Experience at the Durham Armory, April 23, 2015, for an evening of live music and enough delicious food from the best chefs and beverage makers in the region to leave you “Thanksgiving full.” Pack your appetite and your listening ears (maybe even your dance shoes, if you aren’t too full) for this smorgasbord at a fantastic historic venue.
This is the first time the Mint Julep Jazz Band has performed at the Durham Armory and we are excited to grace the same stage as jazz greats, such as Ella Fitzgerald, The Ink Spots, and Cootie Williams, who performed there in the 1940’s.
As we approach the halfway mark on the Mint Julep Jazz Band album Kickstarter, we are excited that people continue to come forward to back us and to donate rewards to the Kickstarter campaign! Here are some stats, facts, and love from the past three weeks:
– As of 2/5/15 we are 65% funded with 278 backers and a total of $7,834 pledged!
– Laura’s mom donated 7 more kittens-talking-on-yellow-telephones aprons – if you’d like one, you can either pledge or upgrade your pledge, there are 2 left!
– Kim Clark of Time Machine Vintage, who makes a lot of the outfits vocalist Laura Windley wears on stage, donated a custom reproduction garment from any era, made to the backer’s specifications and measurements, inclusive of labor and materials. We are so grateful for this generous donation and it’s already been snapped up!
– Lucian Cobb and Laura Windley were featured on the internet radio talk show A Kind Voice on Music with host Tyler Wolf, talking about the Kickstarter, the new album, the creative process, and our wonderful fans! If you missed the broadcast, you can listen to the archive at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/akindvoice/2015/01/27/a-kind-voice-on-music-featuring-mint-julep-jazz-band.
If you are wondering how you can help, the easiest way to get the word out is to invite your friends to our Facebook event for the Kickstarter – Facebook automatically blocks posts that appear to be related to Kickstarter because they want you to pay for advertising, but the invite is a way to reach people directly (note: we are both paying Facebook for ads, while simultaneously circumventing them to reach even more people). Thanks so much for everyone’s help thus far, your backing us and all the “likes” on Facebook really do add up!
This Saturday, March 9, we hit to road to Charlotte, North Carolina for the Queen City Lindy Exchange. We are excited to appear as their Saturday night band for the second year in a row! As North Carolina’s only Lindy Exchange, we are looking forward to some stellar regional dancer attendance, including a large caravan of dancers coming from the Triangle.
Also, QCLX’s theme for this year is Dr. Who – Whovian Lindy Hoppers can participate in a costume contest on Friday night and in a Doctor/Companion Jack and Jill competition on Saturday night. 🙂
Chantilly Hall
2101 Shenandoah Ave.
Charlotte, NC
Band plays from 8:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.
Admission: Registration information for the weekend at http://www.qclx.org, $25 at the door on Saturday night
The Mint Julep Jazz Band is looking forward to performing at ItalianFest at Lafayette Village in Raleigh this Saturday, May 12, 2012. We will be performing from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on the green in front of The Village Grill.
ItalianFest is an all day event, starting at noon, with lots of live music, Italian-themed activities and, of course, food! Come and bring your appetite for some delicious Italian food, relax with a glass of wine, and enjoy the sounds of the Mint Julep Jazz Band.
For more information about the schedule of events, visit the event Facebook invite at http://www.facebook.com/events/382478951767401/.
For more information about Lafayette Village, visit their website at http://www.lafayettevillageraleigh.com.
See you there! Ciao!
We were able to record some tracks from our February 19, 2012 rehearsal, using an iPhone we put in the middle of the room on the floor while we read through some new charts. The iPhone recordings sound pretty good! You can check them out here, and also on our Music page and our ReverbNation page.
Click on the song name to listen to the recording.
The Mint Julep Jazz Band is excited to be included in the lineup for The Art of Cool Project‘s concert series at LabourLove Gallery in Durham, North Carolina. We’ll be their featured band for the May 18, 2012 concert, but until then there are a lot of things going on with this jazz advocacy non-profit that may interest you.
What is The Art of Cool Project? From their website: “The Art of Cool Project is a jazz (also music with jazz roots) and art advocacy project that strives to cross artistic, economic, and cultural boundaries to bring together a diverse mix of people and creativity. We are dedicated to promoting the local vibrant, varied, and surprisingly under-appreciated music and art scene. The project is a unique collaboration between the music and art communities to bring both creative mediums to supporters in an intimate concert setting.”
The Art of Cool Project is a creative philanthropic project spearheaded by Mint Julep Jazz Band trumpeter, Albert Strong IV, and Cicely Mitchell, Al’s amazing girlfriend, social media guru, and jazz advocacy superwoman.
A recent addition to The Art of Cool Project’s website is a jazz calendar for the Triangle, which will include all forms of jazz and displays a running calendar that you can check to see what is happening this week, next month, and beyond. The Mint Julep Jazz Band will be submitting our public concerts to this list and we would encourage other Triangle area jazz groups to utilize this resource.
What can you do to support this worthwhile non-profit? A few things:
1) Attend the December Art of Cool Project After Hours Concert at LabourLove Gallery, featuring smooth sax player Marcus Anderson.
2) Donate to the Holiday Chair Campaign – thus far, the AOC Project has had to rent 80 chairs for each of their concerts. To keep costs down, they are running a Holiday Chair Campaign to raise money to buy chairs for the concert series. A donation of $40 will fund one the chairs and get your name (or name of a loved one or business) painted on the back of the chair as well as preferred seating for the concerts with RSVP.
3) Follow the Art of Cool Project on Twitter or Facebook.
4) Check the jazz calendar regularly and support the Art of Cool Project’s concert series (every third Friday of the month at LabourLove Gallery) and other local jazz artists.
5) Come to LabourLove Gallery on May 18 to hear the Mint Julep Jazz Band!
Starting a new band raises a lot of questions – in conversations with people, these questions have come up most frequently, so here’s a little FAQ to get you more acquainted with the Mint Julep Jazz Band:
What kind of music will you play?
We will focus on music from the 1920’s and 1930’s, but some early 1940’s tunes may creep into the mix. The band will be playing arrangements that are either transcribed from original recordings or reproductions of original recordings (or a combination of both – sometimes having a hi-fi reference helps a lot) and arrangements that our maestro Lucian Cobb creates on his own, based on songs from this era. We will be playing a few arrangements Lucian has done in the past and songs you may have heard vocalist Laura Windley perform, but the majority of the material will be new. Most importantly, this music will swing!
How many people will be in the band?
Right now, we really like the idea of having either a 7 or 8 piece band, giving us either a 3 or 4 piece rhythm section with 3 horns, plus a vocalist. With this format, we are able to play arrangements of big band or smaller group charts, giving us a fuller sound than a jazz combo. We are also able to offer a more affordable alternative to a big band.
Will you have a smaller group?
Unfortunately, we will not have a smaller group. We understand that this limits the venues we can play, especially locally, but we are more interested in creating a specific sound.
Who is going to be in the band?
We’d like to have a set lineup, but in the jazz world this is not always possible – some of our band members have bands of their own, so we are fortunate enough to have other jazz musicians that we have worked with in the past to fill their shoes. You can be sure you will see Peter Lamb (sax), Al Strong (trumpet), Aaron Tucker (drums), Jason Foureman (bass), Aaron Hill (sax), Rich Willey (trumpet), Kyle Santos (trumpet), Mark Wells (piano), and other great jazz musicians from the Triangle and beyond who we enjoy performing with and will lend their unique talents to this endeavor.
When will you be ready to play?
The goal is to be ready in March and, indeed, we’ve already got gigs in March 2012 and beyond! For more details, see our calendar page. We do have a show on February 23 for RDU Rent Party – we invite everyone to come to this sneak preview!
Where will you play?
Our bread and butter will be swing dances, and we’ve already got a wedding on the books. We are also available for community events, outdoor festivals, jazz societies, schools, private parties, charity events/fundraisers, historic and reenactment-related events, and, really, anywhere that people enjoy music. We are looking to travel outside of the Triangle area of North Carolina and would welcome gig opportunities in other cities.
Mint Julep Jazz Band 