Eastbourne - Tom Jones fans promised a tribute night “like no other”

Spokeswoman Emily Barnes said: “Tom-Tastic by Martin Jarvis is the next tribute night in the Winter Garden, which is hosting some of the traditional performances usually held at the seafront landmark. It takes place at the Winter Garden on Saturday, July 9 at 8pm.

“With his powerful voice Martin was always compared with Tom Jones and endlessly asked to perform a ‘Tom song’. One song led to another and soon Mark was performing a complete Tom Jones tribute show all over the world from Las Vegas to Hong Kong. Since the success of the Reload album, the Brit Awards, his knighthood and TV show The Voice, Tom has gained a new set of fans and Martin has blended the new songs in with the timeless favourites."

Tribute tickets cost £8.95 for adult in advance (child £6.95) and doors open at 7pm for 8pm performances. EastbourneBandstand.co.uk.

Also coming up, Eastbourne-based musician David Ford has teamed up with Cambridge-based Annie Dressner to create a duo with dates including July 9 at Hastings’ Electric Palace.

David said: “We are going on a tour called The Summer Holiday Tour and will be playing tiny theatres in mostly seaside towns. Annie and I met and started playing music together in January 2022. After two years in which most musicians were dealing with a frustrating level of inaction and forced to work mostly alone, as the world started opening up we wasted no time in getting our collaboration started. Within two weeks of singing our first song together, we had finished our debut record. We named it 48 hours, in honour of the two-day burst of songwriting that brought about most of the material.

“Annie was born and raised in New York City while I have lived nearly all my life in Sussex. Despite such different places of origin, we easily found much common ground upon which to build a creative partnership.

“Although we never discussed in advance what the songs should sound like or the subjects we should cover, we were instinctively drawn to the kinds of tunes we heard growing up on classic albums by James Taylor, Carole King, Paul Simon, with their emphasis on melody, harmony and lyrics that deal honestly with matters of the heart.

“We recorded the tracks live at Echo Zoo Studios in Eastbourne in a single session and they were mixed in New York by Grammy award-winning mix engineer, James Brown. In July, we will be performing these songs and more on our first headline tour. We could have booked into the usual places, the music venues of Britain with their various charms but we wanted this to be a different experience for ourselves and for audiences. We decided to perform the show in small theatre spaces to match the atmosphere and intimacy of the songs.”