“When we play for swing dancers we can sometimes pass rhythmic phrases to their feet and that is a super interesting connection to explore!” It was a sunny Sunday in 2014 when Leandro Saiago, a jazz saxophone student, saw swing dancers dancing in the streets of Lisbon. Delighted with everything, he asked if there was some band around for them to dance with live music - Which they encouraged and challenged him to ask for some people to create a band. Leandro did it: he got together 5 colleagues and they started to play swing jazz for dancers, among them Margarida Martins, Zé Andrade and Pedro Rodrigues. With the push of David and Cátia from Little Big Apple, Stomping at Six were born and started playing all over the country, whether at parties, dance festivals, music festivals and in other type of events. Meanwhile, Tiago Paiva, Jorge Figueiredo and Nuno Reis joined them, thus completing a band with guitar, double bass, drums, trumpet, saxophone and vocals. They are passionate about what they do and the style of music they play. “The exchanges between music and dance are a synergy difficult to find elsewhere: Feeling the dancers bouncing and their feet hitting the floor makes us part of a much larger group than the 6 of us; Any physical manifestation of any dance to our music is very rewarding. The truth is that swing music evokes us to dance and involves us in a balance of energy where the timbres of the trumpet/saxophone and the marked rhythm always have an effect on people.” In their repertoire we can find both big band style arrangements (in sextet mode) with shout chorus of trumpet/saxophone and imposing calls on the drums, as well as simpler arrangements like improvisation solos, rhythms in the snare drum hoops and a “call & response” dynamic where everyone sings, both on Swing and Blues in a slow & intense or swinging & energetic way. These 6 artists will be playing for us both Saturday and Sunday parties - How lucky are we?