Chairman Music – CABBLP001/CABBCD002/CABBDIG003
Digital release: Volume 1 – Friday 5 June 2026; Volume 2 – Autumn 2026
Saturday 30 May – Kings Place, London (album launch concert)
Recorded 17-23 August 2025 at Lady Eleanor Holles, which Mr. Google tells me is a private day school for girls in Hampton, London, but clearly has a good acoustic for big band gatherings.
Mixed and mastered by Chris Traves and produced by Traves and Au.
If you haven’t already heard of Callum Au, you very soon will. If you can get to Kings Place, in Kings Cross on May 30th for the concert launch of this double album, do please bust a gut to be there.
I first saw Au around twenty years ago. He was a shy youngster playing great trombone solos with NYJO at Ronnie Scott’s during one of the band’s much missed Christmas residencies. NYJO founder Bill Ashton enthused during the interval about the young Au (born to a Scottish mother and Chinese surgeon father) who was honing his remarkable musical talent, part time, while getting a Classics degree at Oxford. Au stayed with NYJO for six years (2005 – 2011) and Ashton always encouraged NYJO band members to try their hand at arranging. During his time with the NYJO band Au composed and arranged 20 new compositions and contributed 45 new arrangements for the band’s library. He also transcribed and arranged the bulk of the music for the band’s ‘Remembering Frankie Laine’ UK Tour.
The net result was a trombonist who can always be relied on to play melodic solos, a composer who writes appealing tunes and an arranger who consistently delivers a fresh take on anything old, new, old, borrowed or blue. Michael Bublé, Raye/RAYE, Dua Lipa and Josh Groban are among the rapidly increasing number of big names benefitting from his writing.
Over the years I’ve seen Au section playing and soloing in others’ bands (including the Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Orchestra) and leading his own orchestras, most recently backing Claire Martin in a musical marriage made in Heaven. This came out of a new venture which has Au directing a big band tied to the Kings Place Halls.
Sing Seven Seas is a hugely ambitious project, with groupings of over 80 musicians and a wide spread of styles spread over two very full CDs ranging from folk to traditional big band swing through contemporary jazz and orchestral tone colour sweeping strings.
“I’ve been gradually writing more original music over the last four years… always with these musicians in mind and the incredible things that they can do,” Au says. “This project brings together almost all of my favourite musicians in one place.”
The favourites list is a veritable “who’s who” of the current studio, show, club and big band scene. Think Freddie Gavita, Andy Wood, Mark Nightingale, Emma Rawicz, Nadim Teimoori, Jay Craig, Luke Tomlinson, Anthony Kerr and on and on and on. There are a lot of ex-NYJO players in there and it is refreshing to hear Au often pay tribute at his own gigs to the special mix of camaraderie and competitiveness that infused the old NYJO road and show band under the one-of-a-kind Bill Ashton.
The Seven Seas producers single out tracks including ‘Swipe Right!’ (as per social media protocols), ‘Murmurations’ (which conjures the magical sight of starlings flocking ahead of their bedtime and features a stunning trombone solo by Au) ‘jazz.ai’ (a great-fun narrated tale of artificial intelligence causing Sorcerer’s Apprentice chaos at a jazz conservatoire) and four-part ‘Influencers Suite’, which thankfully has nothing to do with the modern trade of phoney paid reviewing. It’s a highly listenable tribute to big band influencers including Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Kenny Wheeler’. There’s also ‘Through the Deep Dark Woods’ (based on sounds from Au’s young son) and Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Stardust’ dedicated to Au’s grandparents.
I normally give a very wide berth to concept-themed albums, because they are all too often highly worthy but totally tuneless; you know the kind of thing – “imaging the cultural diversity of an Amazon warehouse” or “portraying the tangled politics of an urban landscape next to a haunted slagheap”. Fortunately Seven Seas is very different. The two discs cover a vast range of styles, moods and feels, and are totally tuneful. I am sure that repeated plays will keep revealing new subtleties and in the coming weeks I shall be kicking myself for not mentioning them here.
It’s all so good that I find it very hard to pick my favourite tracks for special mention. But I love the cod-documentary ‘jazz.ai’, the cheerily Basie-esque “Bill Pill’, the moody ‘Murmurations’ and ‘Bandwagon Blues’ which so cleverly salutes all the traditional big band traits. ‘Two Views of the Blues’ features a wonderful trombone choir (including Callum Au with Mark Nightingale, Daniel Higham and Andy Wood). This echoes their shared work with Rory Ingham’s (sadly only occasional) Trombone Assembly. ‘Fork Hen’ is a bit too Buddy Rich band brash for me but the next track ‘Verity’ soothes with glorious alto from Simon Marsh.
Likewise there really are too many fine solos here by too many top tier Brit players to pick any for special mention. But the final track ‘Stardust’ is an important reminder of what a superb trombonist Au is. The same goes for the airy ‘Changeling’. I keep wondering how Au keeps his lip in while spending so much time writing, arranging, genially leading his bands. Guy Barker has previously quoted Bob Brookmeyer on this, the very real problem that all player-arranger-composers face. “Leave it alone for a day and you will know” Brookmeyer said and Barker endorsed. “Leave it two days and the band knows. Leave it three days and the audience knows.”
This prompts a muse on the sad truth that arrangers, however much they are respected in the biz, are seldom household names. They devote most of their time and talent to making famous featured artists, most often singers, sound good, become rich and stay famous. Nelson Riddle’s work with Frank Sinatra is one exception that comes readily to mind. Quincy Jones too, but largely thanks to Michael Jackson and especially for the pop album ‘Thriller’. Jones was just still a kid jazzer when he had to explain to Lionel Hampton that forming a big band to play half-hour versions of Flying Home involved a lot more than hiring an extra dozen horns to play the tune in unison.
There is a welcome tendency now for established artists to mention the names of the arrangers who they rely on. Georgie Fame often paid tribute to the writing work of Steve Gray. I see that a new CD coming from Norma Winstone cover-credits Steve Gray too. It will be interesting to see when Callum Au’s name as arranger starts to get prime time mentioning.
In the meantime let’s just be glad that Seven Seas has happened. It was clearly a huge project which took a week in the school/studio, with arguably the biggest big band ever – twice the size of Paul Whiteman’s most showcasey show. Normally this kind of project would need funding from a big record label and star name featured artist. Au got no star or grant aid and no angel funding. Instead, and in keeping with his ‘swipe right’ generation, he set up a Kickstarter campaign and released the album on his own label Chairman Music in association with ECN Music
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/callumau/callum-aus-sing-seven-seas-new-big-band-double-album
A final thought, should space permits If arranger-led albums like this arouse your curiosity in the shadowy world of fine scoring, the always-readable US writer Gene Lees has written several books on the topic; more recently British author Oliver Lomax covered the craft at depth in his book ‘Sophisticated Harmony: The lives and music of six great British arrangers.’
Sophisticated Harmony: The lives and music of six great British arrangers
Fast forward some years, and if there is any musical justice, future writers will surely recalling how Callum Au got where he is clearly headed for.
