Hugh Laurie at Cheltenham Jazz Festival

News - House star Hugh Laurie will be performing at the finale of the Cheltenham Jazz festival, just one of four international live concerts, it has been announced.

London, Paris and Berlin will all be playing host to Hugh Laurie’s live New Orleans blues shows – but it’s the fourth location, Cheltenham, which will get Gloucestershire music fans especially excited.

In fact, Hugh Laurie will be performing the finale concert of the 2011 Cheltenham Jazz Festival on Monday 2 May 2011, with the concert also recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 2.

Passionate about blues and piano from an early age, the internationally renowned actor has recently fulfilled a lifelong ambition by recording his debut album Let Them Talk, which is due for release a week after his Cheltenham debut on Monday 9 May 2011.

In the Cheltenham show Hugh and his band, a group of renowned blues musicians in their own right, will be celebrating New Orleans Blues by playing a selection of tunes originally recorded by some of the greats, including Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Ray Charles and Dr. John.

Hugh said: ‘I love this music, as authentically as I know how, and I want you to love it too. And if you get a thousandth of the pleasure from it that I’ve had, we’re all ahead of the game.’

But he admits that New Orleans blues might seem a strange genre for someone with his background, adding: ‘I was not born in Alabama in the 1890s. You may as well know this now. I’ve never eaten grits, cropped a share, or ridden a boxcar… let the record show that I am a white, middle-class Englishman, openly trespassing on the music and myth of the American south.’

Tickets, which are expected to sell-out swiftly, cost £32 and go on public sale on Friday 25 March 2011 through the Cheltenham Festivals box office on (01242) 505444.

For fuller information about this year’s event, see Cheltenham Jazz Festival.

SoGlos.com
23 March 2011