Ewan Bleach Orchestra: Fleeting Paradise
Ewan Bleach Orchestra
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Ewan Bleach returns by popular demand with his brilliant band "The Fleeting Paradise Orchestra"!
Ewan Bleach’s orchestra is marvellous and not to be missed. (JASG fan)
The 10-12 piece jazz ensemble plays arrangements of popular songs and original blues and jazz numbers from the 10-piece ‘territory’ bands of late 20s and early 30s America, such as Benny Moten, Charlie Johnson, Fess Williams and Duke Ellington. They also play material from the polite society dance bands such as Guy Lombardo, Bert Ambrose and Ben Bernie and Ewan is also providing original compositions and arrangements in his own unique style.
Ewan Bleach is a clarinettist, saxophonist, pianist, singer, bandleader, composer, teacher and session musician based in London and specialising in the early styles of jazz, ragtime, blues and swing. He is also involved in projects of new music with various ensembles, and has been involved with other genres including afrobeat and traditional Turkish music.
Ewan leads the Cable Street Rag Band in London and is also involved with international projects including Frog and Henry and the New Orleans band Tuba Skinny, which he has spent time with in the states
Over the past decade of reviewing records, Bleach’s name appears with unusual frequency among my personal standouts, not only from a critical standpoint, or projects I feel advance traditional jazz in the 21st century, but also among the albums I return to simply for pleasure. His playing is consistently evocative and unmistakably his own.
Bleach is a composer who has been quietly developing material across years and projects, and now chooses to present it as a unified statement.
Mystic Mood ..... is the sound of a musician who has spent years lifting other projects, absorbing traditions from many directions, and who now knows exactly what he wants to say under his own name.
I’m not the first to say it, but Ewan Bleach is easily among the most distinctive reed players in traditional jazz today and deserves to be followed and supported by the jazz community as the standouts of recent generations were.
(The Syncopated Times December 31 2025)