The New Jazz Orchestra

Innovative Contemporary Jazz Ensemble

British jazz big band, formed in 1963 by Clive Burrows and directed form 1964 to 1968 by Neil Ardley. The original idea for the New Jazz Orchestra arose in the autumn of 1963 out of an excited late night discussion about big bands between Clive Burrows and Les Carter. The exchange nished with the resolution to establish a big band and the NJO made their debut at The Green Man pub in south east London in December 1963, originally billed as The Bird/Burrows Big Band. Ian Bird left the band in 1964, and they briefy called themselves The Neoteric Jazz Orchestra before settling for the rather less arcane sounding New Jazz Orchestra. By this time Clive Burrows had left to join Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band and his place as director was taken by Neil Ardley. It was Ardley’s appearance that transformed the NJO from just another big band into a distinctively voiced ensemble, a band whose sound was not slavishly beholden to the American model but instead, whilst acknowledging the debt to Duke Ellington and Gil Evans, expressed an English sensibility that can be best described as ‘pastoral’, distinctively drawing on the classical idiom and coloured with the shades and textures of composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams. This well-balanced combination of classical orchestration and jazz made it more than a third-stream experiment. The NJO really could swing and its success lay, in large part, in the leadership of Neil Ardley.