Bare Bones Big Band swings at NHS

About 75 swing music enthusiasts heard the Bare Bones Big Band (BBBB), a nine-piece swing band perform the last concert of Norwood's Winter Sunday Concert Series on Feb.15 at the Paul M. Alberta Performing Arts Center at Norwood High School. BBBB produced the big band sound that is signature to the timeless standards of the 1930s through the 1970s, with a few Broadway hits included.

Even if you don’t know the song titles or the composers, you know the big brass jazz sound that has been the backdrop music for weddings and clubs for generations and the soundtrack for countless Hollywood movies. The band played standards made famous by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and others, and has a full cohort of saxophones, trumpets, trombones, clarinet, bass, drums, and guitar. Bandleader Christopher Mish has orchestrated each song on the play list to create the full-sized sound as close to the original as possible, even with fewer instruments.

The first set began with “Take the 'A' Train," the signature tune for the Duke Ellington Orchestra. BBBB’s vocalist Lynne Radiches appeared intermittently to sing hits like “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” the Andrew Sisters’ 1937 hit “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön,” and other standards like “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “We’ll Meet Again,” and “All that Jazz,” from the Broadway show and movie “Chicago.” As an added treat, each audience member was given a free ticket for raffle at intermission that included gift certificates for Domino’s Pizza and Boston Beef.

No special incentive was needed to entice Simone Winslow of Walpole and Richard Trocchio from Plymouth to attend. They have been dancing together for 16 years, and the couple took over the exit area, stage right off the seating area, to dance to almost every song.

“We’re dancing almost every chance we get; we go. I've been dancing since the eighth grade,” said Trocchio. Winslow said she hasn’t been dancing that long, but still a long time. Neither has any formal dance training, though you’d never know it. “Yeah, it's just rhythm. We have rhythm,” said Trocchio. “We go to the Holliston Senior Center every Friday afternoon,” added Winslow. “They have a 12-piece big band. It's three bucks a person, coffee and goodies. There's good dancing there.”

Mish, the band’s leader, said they’ve been playing together for 10-14 years, maybe longer. “It really started out as I just wrote these arrangements, because I wrote everything, arranged everything. And then, yeah, we'd get together every so often to just read them, read them down, because, you know, it doesn't sound good on the computer, but you never know,” he said.

The members are from the area, including Taunton, Attleboro, Foxboro, Norwood, and Woonsocket. “Yeah, I knew all these guys. We're all freelancing. We play in a whole bunch of different other bands. There's a core of people, but you know, not everybody can make it all the time.” When asked if younger people have been coming out to hear their music, Mish said, “Oh yeah, there's a lot of, well, how do you define young folks? There are some, there are some like 30, 30-ish year olds that come.”

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Mish said that younger people want high tempo music and the band can deliver what they want.

While the winter concerts are over, Norwood’s annual summer concert series in the Common will begin on Sunday, July 5, 2026.