Marmalade Jam, the four-piece vocal version of Marmalade Circus are currently on tour for Musica Viva in Schools in Singapore, working for the Young Musicians Society (sponsored by Macquarie Bank). The tour is going really well. The audiences have been enthusiastic, excitable and huge (between 300 and 800 – more than twice as many kids per concert as in Australia) with a wide variety of age groups covered (from 5-19). It has been great seeing how the kids here respond to the songs and as per usual songs about animals (like Dents in the Fence) are still the most popular.

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A big thankyou to all who came to our JazzSA gig last Sunday night at the Gov. We had a fantastic night stretching the tunes out, letting the soloists develop their ideas further.

The Free Jazz stuff went down well, but for anyone who came and didn't dig that kind music, relax—we won't be doing it very often. It was fun though!

Special guest Mike Stewart did a sterling job and it was great to have him playing with us again after 5 years.

We look forward to having some new video up soon.

Marmalade Circus have a gig this Sunday night (July 13) at the Governor Hindmarsh Hotel (Port Rd Hindmarsh) starting at 8pm (doors open at 7:30pm). Tickets at the door $20/$15 or contact Mike Stewart on 8303 4339 or via email book-@jazzsa.org.au (yes he is the current Jazz Co-ordinator). You may have seen that this gig was listed as the ‘Hot Ticket’ for Sunday in The Advertiser on Thursday.

The gig will feature a lot of the new songs premiered at the Fringe (which was a great success thankyou), a few of the older (revamped) Marmalade tunes and a Free Jazz suite Mark wrote a few years ago. Expect a couple of new trio tunes as well as Shireen, Mark and Ben have been rehearsing some new stuff.

Former Marmalade stalwart Mike Stewart is rejoining the band for the night and it is lovely to have him back on board. Our regular tenor player Chris Soole forgot to put the date in his diary and will be interstate—bless his heart!

In other news the quartet (Marmalade Jam) have been working over in Perth recently and are just about to jet off to Singapore for 17 days for Musica Viva in Schools concerts. All are a bit scared about the three ‘h’s (heat, humidity and heavy-lugging) but are really looking forward to performing their show to a brand new audience.

Hope to see you on Sunday.