Coming Soon, The John Wilson Orchestra's Sinatra Prom

My mother and I had a grand old time on Sunday afternoon catching up on Friday night's Prom, a tribute to Frank Sinatra from the John Wilson Orchestra - the intrepid Geordie conductor's all-singing, all-dancing visits to the Albert Hall with his hand-picked 100-piece band have fast become one of the best-selling events of the Proms seasons since their first appearance in 2007, and their recent recordings on Warner Classics have been big hits in the Presto office (their Cole Porter and Rodgers & Hammerstein collections have both featured as Discs of the Week). Each year I find myself fielding a deluge of email enquiries in the week following their televised Prom, so this time I'm getting ahead of the game and confirming that Friday's concert will indeed be released on DVD by Warner.

The headline soloist on Friday was Wilson's long-term collaborator Seth Macfarlane (perhaps better known as the creator of the adult cartoon sit-coms Family Guy and American Dad!), but for me the stand-out performances of the night came from another polymath - the young British actor Jamie Parker, whom I first discovered as Scripps in the original run of Alan Bennett's The History Boys and who has since scored palpable hits as Prince Hal/Henry V at The Globe as well as in plays by Thomas Middleton, Tom Stoppard and Tennessee Williams, to name but a few. More recently, he's appeared in musicals such as A Little Night Music, High Society and Guys and Dolls (he'll repeat his acclaimed turn as Skye Masterson in London later this year), and really has the idiom off-pat for this music; his performance of the title-song from Guys & Dolls with Macfarlane is an absolute joy, and just one highlight of a superb evening. Roll on the DVD!

Other discs from The John Wilson Orchestra