Jazz in the Church

The local village church which I attend is trying to raise sufficient funds to build a new hall on land immediately joining the church. There have been many events to date in aid of The St Peter Project and yesterday we staged a jazz concert in the church itself. Somewhat unusual for a very traditional Anglican Church but it was a great event, good fun with really enjoyable music. It was played by three excellent musicians, using a variety of instruments all accompanied by a solo singer providing the vocals - or as they are called the Kenton Budd Jazz Quartet.

It was a good opportunity to take some shots in available light as I didn't want to use flash. I asked permission of the band first, which I am sure is only courteous, as it could be off putting to the performers to have someone moving around with a lens pointing in their direction. I used the Panasonic f2.8 35 to 100mm lens at f2.8 on the Olympus OMD EM5. I pushed the ISO to 3200  and converted the images to black and white; so whilst they have some grain, this quite suits the style of photography. I manually focused in aperture priority which meant that the camera would select the shutter speed. In most cases this turned out between 1/25 and 1/30 of a second. Just fast enough to capture the image without too much blur.

The images are shown below and I hope they capture something of the atmosphere of the event given the venue.

The Saxophonist

The Keyboard Player

Kenton Budd provided the vocals to some true jazz classics

The Drummer

The Saxophonist, although I doubt he was playing a tune which would have suited Psalm 46!

A deft touch on the 'old' ivories

The Saxophonist turned electric guitarist

Do I detect a little emotion in the eyes whilst singing this particular song?

Still blowing.......

.....and with music, a glass of wine. The pew shelf is not just for the hymn book.

Tweet