The Southern Syncopated Orchestra

The Southern Syncopated Orchestra are the subject of a talk at Brighton Dome on Wednesday 14 October, held in the Founders Room on Church Street. It's an exploration of the band's impact on audiences and the development of popular music in Britain, and it brings back a name that doesn't come up as often as it should.

The orchestra were early jazz pioneers and the first jazz band to visit the UK and Ireland, touring from 1919 to 1921. They started in 1918 as the New York Syncopated Orchestra, formed by the African American composer, violinist and conductor Will Marion Cook. He put together a huge ensemble: 27 black musicians and 19 singers from New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Guyana, Barbados, Antigua and Ghana. Among them were the clarinetist and later soprano saxophone virtuoso Sidney Bechet and the singer Evelyn Dove.

They arrived in Britain in 1919, based in London at first before touring the country. That tour brought them to Brighton for a four-week residency at the Dome in August 1921, making them the first group of black musicians to play there. Their repertoire covered a lot of ground — spirituals and plantation songs, ragtime, blues, jazz and light classical pieces — and they even played a command performance at Buckingham Palace for the Prince of Wales.

There's a bit of a gap in the record, though: the group was never recorded, so their legacy survives in little more than a few photographs, one of which was taken outside the Dome. The talk looks at what they left behind and the mark they made on the music that followed. It runs from 13:00 with doors opening at 12:30, and tickets are £10, with Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival members saving £2 on full price.