Name: Roland Perrin's Blue Planet Orchestra
Start: 2026-03-07T19:30:00+00:00
End: 2026-03-07T22:30:00+00:00
Location: Verdict Jazz

“Roland’s music feels both meticulously crafted and completely alive. The Blue Planet Orchestra delivered with dazzling clarity — intricate textures, infectious grooves and solos that lifted the room.” - The Guardian
Roland is a musician and composer with a truly global musical voice — equally schooled in Latin, African, Brazilian and Jazz traditions. His work brings these influences together with a rare balance of craft and spontaneity, combining strong compositional narrative with the freedom, edge and surprise of improvisation. The result is music that feels both deeply rooted and boldly exploratory: a kaleidoscope of World Music grooves, rich harmonic colour, and uplifting rhythmic drive.
The Blue Planet Orchestra — a powerhouse ensemble drawn from some of London’s finest and most adaptable musicians. This is a band built for versatility: players who can deliver the most demanding contemporary scores with precision and sensitivity, and then turn on a dime into fearless, high-level improvisation. Whether the music calls for Afro-Cuban fire, Brazilian swing, African-inspired polyrhythms or straight-ahead jazz momentum, the Blue Planet Orchestra brings it to life with flair and authenticity.
Roland’s writing and arrangements are known for their imagination and joyful unpredictability. Alongside original compositions, the set may include striking re-workings of classic repertoire, reframed through unexpected cultural lenses — Charlie Parker filtered through a New Orleans street parade feel, Schubert transported to Jamaica, or The Beatles reimagined in an Afro-Cuban mood. These transformations are not novelty exercises, but deeply musical reinventions that reveal new emotional colours and rhythmic possibilities in familiar material.
Influences run wide and deep: the elegance and orchestral thinking of Duke Ellington, the spiritual lyricism of Abdullah Ibrahim, the melodic sophistication of Antonio Carlos Jobim, and the infectious dance-floor energy of artists such as Buena Vista Social Club and Eddie Palmieri. Yet the sound remains unmistakably Roland’s — vibrant, contemporary, and designed to connect.
Expect a performance that is dynamic and immersive: tightly written passages giving way to open improvisation, irresistible grooves underpinning lyrical melodies, and a band that plays with both precision and joy. Whether you come for the jazz, the global rhythms, or the thrill of hearing boundaries dissolve in real time, this is music that invites you in — and then takes you somewhere unexpected.