Tomorrow night (Tuesday 18 November), the BBC Concert Orchestra and conductor Clark Rundell are appearing at the EFG London Jazz Festival with two new BBC commissions. The BBC CO's Associate Composer Guy Barker has used a scenario by Robert Ryan to paint a portrait in music of London's Soho, and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist Trish Clowes appears with her own quintet with tracks from her new album and 'The Fox, the Parakeet and the Chestnut', also written specially for this concert.
You can hear the concert at 7.30pm live on BBC Radio 3, introduced by Sara Mohr-Pietsch. Guy Barker’s collaborator, Robert Ryan, says: ‘Earlier this year, I received a phone call from Guy Barker, saying he had a hankering to write a new orchestral piece for the BBC CO; however, he was staring at a blank page and needed a framework. We have done this before, with dZf, a re-working of The Magic Flute, and last year That Obscure Hurt, a Henry James/Britten-inspired piece. I give Guy a narrative: he builds his music around it. This time all he had was “Soho” as a theme…’
Rob gives a fascinating and detailed explanation of the narrative he devised for Guy in this recommended personal blog post.
The concert will be available for 30 days on the BBC iPlayer.
