Holy Cross Centre Trust

Timebankers enjoyed a trip to the London Jazz Festival in November to see ‘Naturally 7′.  Timebank member Brian Leach reviews the evening…

It was billed as the key event in this years London Jazz Festival, but if the over 40’s of a 2,000 sell out croud thought they were in for a quiet evening of calm relaxing Jazz music well then they quite clearly forgot to do their homework on the evening’s programme.

It started good enough  with the support act of a well dressed choir of 50 called ‘Voice Lab’ all acompanied by a delightful singer called Ian Smith,  who seems to think and even makes you believe he’s a more mature version of Elton John whenever he was sat behind the grand piano, that is if someone could hold him back from running around the hall teasing the audience into a singsong or getting  them to make funny noises.

As the lights went down after the interval for the main act, known as Naturally 7, the stage setting consisted of just 14 towels as the announcer preached enthusiastically “these guys are gonna sweat like they’ve never sweat before”.

As several big burly Security guards linned up accross the front row, and usherettes dashed round continuously discouraging people from taking flash photography, hundreds of young girls started screaming at ear shattering volume as 7 young hooded men from America took the stage.

The first half of their act consisted of very easy going songs including a brilliant sound alike version of Simon & Garfunkel’s ” Scarborough fair”, and getting to know each member of the group and what their own musical impression abilities were considering  they had no real instruments  of their own to play with. A tall skinny  lad who was a very mature  looking 13 year old was their most inspirational member.

The second half of their act was all energetic song and dance routines starting of with a melody of Mickael Jackson songs sending the croud into a wild frenzy as 2 members did the moonwalk dance across the stage.

Near the end the group left the stage to a 10 minute standing ovation and came back on to do 2 more songs with the whole audience on their feet singing and dancing.

This group are destined to be highly famous and although all our timebanking group were lucky enough to get the tickets,  I think I would pay good money to see them perform live in London again.