LPO: Jazz Roots, Soul Branches

LPO are well known for their series of commuter concerts: bite-sized pieces, played early in the evening for people as they leave work.

I don’t think this show fell officially into that category but the early start time was an interesting way to attract a different type of crowd. And it obviously worked because the venue was packed.

St John’s, Waterloo

As well as being a place for worship, and an important sanctuary and community space, the recently renovated space is a well-known music venue with a year-round programme co-curated by artists and performers.

We’ve been there to see the London Incidental Orchestra on a previous Cog Night, and I’ve been a few times, including a magical performance of Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, by the LPO, a year ago.

Some of the Cog team, assembled in St. John’s in Waterloo.

Tonight’s show saw the LPO branching out (to use their own metaphor) through the family tree of jazz.

They eased us in gently with a suite of four works, inspired by Duke Ellington…

David Schiff’s Ducal Suite (2017)

1. Clarinet Lament
2. Air Conditioned Jungle 
3. Heaven
4. Kinda Dukish / Rockin’ in Rhythm

Benjamin Mellefont, clarinet / Pieter Schoeman, violin / Tania Mazzetti, violin / Lucia Ortiz Sauco, viola / Kristina Blaumane, cello

I’m no jazz historian so I’m not sure I fully appreciated the subtlety of the work. But it was clear that the first two pieces (focused on the clarinet) marked the progression in Ellington’s life from early trad jazz to 1950s be-bop.

Maybe the rest of the audience were more sophisticated than me, or maybe they read the programme notes, but they seemed to know not to clap until the end of the second piece. When to clap is always a mystery to me.

Still focused on the clarinet, Heaven had a much more spiritual (churchy) feel, which worked well in the venue. And that contrasted with the fourth which I think I ‘kinda’ recognised as a more swinging Ellington piece.

Simon Bainbridge’s For Miles (1994)

Paul Beniston, trumpet / Alice Munday, oboe/cor anglais / Benjamin Mellefont, clarinet / Thomas Watmough, clarinet /  Lucia Ortiz Sauco, viola / Kristina Blaumane, cello / Sebastian Pennar, double bass

The first group of musicians (a quintet, I guess) left and seven more (a septet?)  took to the performance area. There is no ‘stage’ as such, just an acoustically advantageous space at the front of the audience/congregation.

Euchar Gravina, Artistic Director for the church, was excited to introduce the next work by his former tutor, Simon Bainbridge. And he was pleased to leave the full introduction to Bainbridge’s daughter, the charismatic actor Rebecca Bainbridge.

If I’m totally truthful, the work, a tribute to the work of Miles Davis and Gil Evans, was a bit high-brow for me. But Paul Beniston did an amazing job on trumpet.

Carl Davis’s arrangement of selections from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess 

1. Summertime
2. A woman is a sometime thing
3. Bess, you is my woman now
4. It ain’t necessarily so

Benjamin Mellefont, clarinet / Pieter Schoeman, violin / Tania Mazzetti, violin / Lucia Ortiz Sauco, viola / Kristina Blaumane, cello

Arranging Porgy and Bess for a quartet is no mean feat, although it did feel like more of an enjoyably academic exercise than a re-examination of the classic jazz opera. Interesting and fun but never likely to stir the soul like a full orchestra and vocalists.

From a distance, in the interior of a church, four bassoonists, stand to take applause.

Amy Casey’s arrangement of…
1. Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody
2. Steve Wonder’s Superstition

Jonathan Davies, bassoon / Dominic Tyler, bassoon / Emma Harding, bassoon / Simon Estell, contrabassoon

The final pieces were what we’d all been waiting for, or at least I had. How on earth could they recreate these jazz/pop anthems with just four bassoons?

Well, brilliantly, it turns out. The bassoon somehow covers the whole range of instrumentation and some of the vocal, from the walking bass to the screeching guitars. I loved it.

As Casey writes, in the programme notes, these arrangements were only intended to be a bit of fun but they’ve found audiences across the globe.

Download the programme for full notes.

I very much enjoyed dipping in to a broad selection of musical snippets from the exceptional musicians of the LPO. And the early start time was a real bonus. I’ll definitely be looking out for more commuter concerts by LPO and checking out the performance calendar at St. John’s.

Lada Chizhova created our illustration, see more work on their website.