Musicians: Pete Wareham (alto sax) Marcus Bonfanti (guitar, vocals) Tiger Wareham (vocals) Quincy Wareham (guitar) Isabella Bonfanti (alto sax, vocals)
Over the last year or so, we’ve been inviting young musicians to join us on sessions. The benefits of cross-generational activities are well documented, for both older and younger people. Over that time we’ve seen some fantastic things. Things we’d hoped for and things we couldn’t possibly have imagined.
On Arts In Care Homes Day in September 2022, we were joined by (among others) Quincy and Tiger Wareham (son and daughter of saxophonist Pete) on guitar and vocals as well as Isabella Bonfanti (daughter of Marcus) on saxophone and vocals. On 9th August this year we welcomed these three young musicians back to Bridgeside with their dads for what turned out to be a fantastic afternoon of live music…
We usually preface our sessions with lunch from our local sandwich shop (shout out to Nibbles on St Peter’s Street!) but as they’re closed for a well-deserved summer break, we made do with a self-service picnic which proved to be a great opportunity to chat and to hopefully alleviate some nerves that were flying about. Isabella had never met Quincy and Tiger so it was great to see them chatting about what songs they had prepared and which ones they could collaborate on.
Isabella opened proceedings with Louis Armstrong’s Wonderful World, on both sax and vocals as dad Marcus provided the harmonic accompaniment with Pete very much taking the ‘second sax’ chair.
The Bonfantis then went into Harry Glasson’s This Is My Cornwall. You’d be forgiven for not knowing this one, let us explain… Marcus plays with a number of different bands and artists, one of which is the sea shanty band Fisherman’s Friends. He’d taught Isabella this one so they could sing it for Spitz GM Thom (a proud Cornishman). There were some tears at this point.
Once Quincy had tuned up, he and Tiger joined Marcus on stage for Ben E King’s classic Stand By Me. During the song Pete encouraged Isabella to grab her sax and between them they worked out a melody around the repeating chord sequence.
Resident JR then requested You Are My Sunshine. Quincy wasn’t familiar with this one, but Marcus guided him through the chords and they delivered a great rendition, with JR singing along on the mic.
Spitz musicians imparting their knowledge and expertise to young musicians is exactly what we’d hoped for, and what our latest project funded by the Arts Council was partly focussed on. We hadn’t necessarily planned for it to work the other way too however…
…Tiger and Quincy had prepared David Bowie’s Starman. Marcus didn’t know this one and it was great to see Quincy taking the role of teacher as he talked Marcus through the chord changes as they played.
Over on the mic, Tiger and Isabella’s voices blended beautifully and it was hard for us to realise that they had never performed together before. During Let It Be they seemed able to communicate wordlessly, instinctively knowing which of them would take the harmony and which the melody. There was a definite ‘proud dad’ moment at this, as Marcus and Pete caught eyes and grinned at each other.
Towards the end of the session, resident JR asked to sing two of his original songs; Love Is A Powerful Word and Mother. Both songs are incredibly moving, dealing with universal themes of love and loss and learning to process grief. As Marcus guided Quincy through co-writer Nat Keen’s chords progression, Tiger and Isabella provided moral support and compassion as JR sang through his tears. The young musicians showed real maturity and kindness in the way they engaged with this difficult and highly-charged moment.

We were all so impressed by the professionalism with which Quincy, Tiger and Isabella performed and conducted themselves throughout the entire session. Our ‘Next Generation’ project has in-part been about developing the next generation of Spitz musicians and if these three are anything to go by, The Spitz will be in good hands in future.
As Marcus put it –
“What a tremendous day. Let’s do that again”
