Jazz @ The Puzzle with Panjumby

Led by steel-pannist Dudley Nesbitt, Panjumby are a five-piece band with a repertoire of Modern Jazz, Contemporary Calypso and classic Latin tunes from Brazil, Cuba, Trinidad and Jamaica. A high-energy group of engaging and accessible performers,

Nesbitt grew up in Trinidad and was a child prodigy on the steel pan, eventually becoming a regular arranger for the prestigious annual Panorama competition at a very young age.

He has an extraordinary musical mind and is fully capable of composing a through-written piece of music for a pan orchestra of over a hundred players in his head, teaching them all

their parts from memory without recourse to scores or notes, or of orchestrating pieces from the classical canon for the same size ensemble.

He is one of the world’s prime exponents of steel pan; one of the few musicians to truly translate steel pan techniques into a jazz context and to bring a group close to understanding the real

underpinnings of Calypso, Soca & Trinidadian rhythm.

The present line-up has been steady for fifteen years, and the musicians have developed the kind of instinctive rapport that most groups nowadays can only aspire to.

The band’s line up is:

Dudley Nesbitt, steel pan, cowbell

Richard Ormrod, sax, flute, percussion

Barclay McKay, keyboard, guitar

Paul Baxter, bass

Sam Hobbs, drums