Renowned British saxophonist Trevor Watts' rousing and exuberant Celebration Band began as a workshop project organized by percussionist Jamie Harris with support from Same Sky, a Brighton-based charitable organization involved in community arts activities across South East England. In preparation for an October 1999 performance at a park in Watts' hometown of Hastings, the saxophonist taught workshop participants concepts of the Moiré Music ensembles, his longstanding outlets for propulsive, multi-layered composing and improvising informed by African polyrhythms. In addition to Harris himself, the young musicians involved in the workshops included three saxophonists, Rob Leake, Amy Leake, and Marcus Cummins, and a guitarist, Geoff Sapsford.

The Hastings performance proved so successful that Watts expressed interest in continuing the project, and the other musicians readily agreed. The result was a Watts-led "Hastings street band" that played at outdoor events in Brighton and Folkestone during 2000, and by the end of the year Watts was beginning to see the outfit's potential as an ongoing professional group that might even perform indoors once in a while. Cummins suggested that Italian drummer Giampaolo Scatozza would be well suited for the band, and on New Year's Eve Watts called Scatozza with an invitation to travel to Hastings for rehearsals. Scatozza indeed proved an ideal fit, and the group started a gig at the Carlisle, a venue in Hastings that got its start in the '60s as a "biker-friendly pub." Roger Carey soon signed on as bassist, and the final lineup of Trevor Watts' Celebration Band was now in place.

In April 2001 the Celebration Band entered Watts' Arc studio to record a set of compositions the saxophonist had penned for the ensemble, and the results were released on his Arc label as the eponymous Trevor Watts the Celebration Band album in November of that year. The disc garnered a favorable response internationally, and Watts began receiving invitations for the band to perform at various locales far from its Hastings home base. In 2002 the Celebration Band toured Ireland and performed at a jazz festival in Slovenia; the following year brought a North American tour as well as dates in Europe; and the British Council also supported Celebration Band concerts and workshops in Macedonia.

By the mid-2000s, Watts had disbanded the group and moved on to other projects of a more intimate scope, including a touring and recording duo with percussionist Harris and his ongoing improvising collaboration with pianist Veryan Weston. Nevertheless, on disc anyway, there would be more to come from Trevor Watts the Celebration Band, as the FMR label released the group's Live in Macedonia album in 2013; the album was recorded in Skopje in 2004, and included a track entitled "The Friendship Ship," in which musicians from Roma, Macedonian, and Albanian communities were all invited on-stage to play with the Celebration Band. A tremendous amount of positivity was generated by Trevor Watts the Celebration Band's Macedonian appearances, and Jamie Harris would recall the words printed by a Skopje newspaper upon the group's departure from the city: "And so the Friendship Ship finally sails away." ~ Dave Lynch, Rovi