About Us

Woburn Jazz, previously known as 'The Open Band', is a band of 20 core members, playing an extensive and exciting repatoire of Big Band music, ranging from classic Swing, Mainstream Jazz, Bossa Novas & Latin, Blues, Funk to Contemporary tunes.

The band was established in 1994 by Jonathan Hyams & Charles Davies They started the band after they and founder members had met on a course run by the Dankworth Foundation in Silsoe, Bedfordshire. The band was called "The Open Band"open to anyone who could play an instrument and wanted to learn how to improvise and play jazz. They met at the Courtyard Arts Centre at Great Linford.

John & Charles were also Co-Directors of a successful business that meant eventually they could no longer spare the time to run the band.

In 1995 fellow band member Cathi Smith took on the job of MD.

The band had been administered by the Arts Centre but later it registered as an independant society looking after their own finances.

Cathi was helped by John Gates to compere the band and they went on to hold many concerts and workshops.

This culminated in them winning an Arts Grant to compose an original suite of music all about Milton Keynes, aided by the Jazz Trombonist Mark Bassey.

On May 26th 2000, the band proudly made their premier performance of the Milton Keynes Suite composed by members of the band at The Millenium Dome "Our Town" Day for Milton Keynes.

After their success at the Dome, the band went on to produce a CD called

"Open All Ours" which included more music composed by Band members aided and inspired this time by new band member and composer Gray Smith.

THe band was under Cathi's directorship until 2002. The baton was then passed to John Gates until he recently retired to 'just play'. He is still a member of the band and passed the musical directorship on in 2018 to our then lead Alto player Paul Taverner.

We enjoyed a successful year with Paul as our MD, until he had to move on due to other commitments.

In 2019 the band was now under the joint musical directorship of Andrea Rowlands & Christalle Aldridge. The band worked hard to increase their repetoire and performed gigs for local Swing Dance groups. They kept the band together through Covid and had a successful outdoor gig at Shuttleworth House on the lawns as people were allowed to start mixing.

In 2022 Christalle became seriously ill so Andrea took the reins on her own. In 2023 she entered the band into the Milton Keynes Music Festival in the Large Ensemble section.

We were very please to come first and be awarded a cup. After a busy time running the band alone Andrea decided to move on due to other commitments. Christalle had recovered from her illness and has now taken on the baton as the current MD.

The band meets every Thursday for rehearsals at Woburn Village Hall, and it not only practices music for performances, but also strives to push the boundaries of all the players, to increase their musical skills. This is accomplished through workshops, sectional training and inviting professional musicians to assist us.

In 2016 the band entered the Milton Keynes Festival Of Drama, Art & Music. We were very pleased to win the coverted title of Best Large Ensemble section, and the competition was tough!

We entered the competition again in 2023 and were delighted to win the title of Best Large Ensemble for a second time.

As well as playing at private or festival concerts we have been proud to support many local charity events and in recent years have played for The Woburn Festival, OXFAM's OxJam, Ian Botham's Walk for Leukemia at M&S in Milton Keynes; and in 2017 we played a joint charity event with Leighton & Linslade Concert Band raising money for Milton Keynes Hospital. We raised £4000 between us to enable them to purchase an incubator cot transporter for neonatal babies.