"One morning I realised that I was close to Jimmie Lunceford’s fatal age, causing me to entertain a strange logic. If all the good swingers like Lunceford and Gershwin – or Mozart for that matter – tended to die early, and I was still alive, it followed that I was unable to swing." SWING SYMPHONY is a witty and affectionate celebration of eccentricity, orgasms, and the challenge of being middle-aged. Guided by his ‘stride’ piano-playing, 78 record collector friend Booker, Christopher Lawrence’s search for ‘a new song’ takes him to a medieval village in the South of France. The cast includes the reclusive American cartoonist R.Crumb; Pete, the world’s foremost Zorro enthusiast; and the persuasive Nini, doyenne of the disproportionately large contingent of piano tuners. By exploring an exciting time in popular music when Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman and others made Swing the Thing, Lawrence learns that "in order to swing, one first had to be able to hang loose". But most of all, he discovers the welcome intervention of unlikelihood that can happen when one stops for a while to see the show.