Enter the very smartly turned out band with their polo shirts and stage-side banner displaying the distinctive Europa logo.

Most bands need some kind of warm up before they really get going but Europa hit us with the wow factor right away with some red hot trad followed by a swinging mainstream style. By the time they got the Esso fuelled ‘Bobby Shaftoe’ (dedicated to Gordon Brown) Steve’s accordion skills were attracting much attention from the audience, many of whom were unfamiliar with this instrument in a jazz band. Folks marvelled at his fingers dancing over the myriad buttons on the left hand side and the variety of sound coming from the instrument. Perhaps this élan comes of seventy four years of accordion playing!

But the whole band produced an impressive variety of sounds - the soprano sax with trumpet/trombone riffs on ‘Memphis Blues’, the slightly Parisian sounding ‘Comes Love’ and the stumbling audience participation in Gordon’s tongue twisting vocal to ‘Nagasaki’ (ever tried Gilbert and Sullivan?).

Steve’s accordion was again instrumental (groan!) in capturing the smooth big band genre for ‘You Brought aNew Kind of Love’ and later in the programme for a touch of Glenn Miller with ‘Moonlight Serenade’ and ‘Little Brown Jug’ in contrast to the 20s style medley of ‘Charleston’, ‘Ain’t She Sweet’ and ‘Anybody Seen My Girl’. Clarinet and piano accordion had a nice conversation in ‘Bei Mir Bist Du Schon’ which, for some reason, evoked a memory of the film The Alamo, before Martin took the solo spot to give us a bouncy bossa nova version of ‘Rainy Day’.