James Last and Paul Mauriat had a profound impact on my musical experience from a very young age. They introduced me to classical music and a wonderful style of orchestral works for many musical genres. But James Last specifically was where my inspiration/fascination with brass and trumpet all began; I even purchased my first trumpet in Belgrade (former Yugoslavia) in the early 80’s not even knowing how to play the damn thing and so began my long journey with the trumpet and the agony for the neighbours in my native Egypt at the time 🙂
In celebrating his memory following is one of my favourite works followed by a piece where I play along with this wonderful orchestra. That said let me just mention briefly that I would love to consider help developing an orchestra based in Europe to follow the James Last style of music. I truly believe there is still a market for this style of music and we can even begin with online collaboration and see where it goes from there. So if there are musicians out there with the right talents and who would seriously consider contributing to this effort do get in touch through this site and let’s see where it goes.
For now hope you enjoy the clips and may we all live to remember this musical talent for a long time to come; remember better to use headphones for both}.