The parents who stayed

It starts, as so many things do, on a Saturday morning. Every week we drive our children to Ealing Junior Music School, where they learn their instruments among friends. We parents sit in the corridor with a tepid coffee, nodding politely through scales and squeaks, week after week, year after year.

One Saturday, somebody borrowed a music stand. Then somebody else produced a cornet that had been gathering dust. A clarinet appeared, then a banjo, and before long the parents had quietly formed their own ensemble in the next room — the Very Senior orchestra, so named in affectionate contrast to the juniors next door.

What bound us together wasn't just the company. It was a shared love of the original American jazz of 1915 to 1930 — the music of New Orleans, Chicago and Harlem in its first, fiery decade of recordings, before the swing era smoothed it out. We play it the way it was first heard: collective, ragged, joyful and gloriously loud.

Six of us now: Jeremy, our leader and the band's resident jazz scholar; Jamie on reeds; Gill on trumpet; Peter on trombone; Dennis on banjo and guitar; and James holding down the bass and tuba. We are, all of us, parents first — loyal Saturday-morning fixtures, every single week, without fail.

The children keep learning in the next room. We keep playing in ours. And between us, a small corner of Ealing carries on the sound of the very first jazz.