I was invited to play a jazz gig recently in a band that had been put together just for the occasion - a 'telephone' band, as you might say.
When I turned up, there was no trombone player, but we had two reed players - clarinet and saxophone.
We three were required to be the 'front row', with the rhythm section behind us. So I had the clarinet player on my left and the sax man on the right, with me in the middle playing cornet. Before we started, we had a chat and commented that we were obviously quite elderly.
We all revealed our ages and - guess what - the combined total of the three of us was 243 years! We wondered whether that was a record for the front row of a jazz band.
My guess is that there are plenty of bands these days whose front rows could beat it.
