“It’s a reflection of jazz...but it’s not a jazz piece.”
In this turbulent world in which we reside, someone, somewhere, thought it might be apt to bring about the clash of two other worlds staged within London’s stoic Barbican Centre. 72 years after Aaron Copland and Benny Goodman’s classical-jazz ‘clash’ Shabaka Hutchings threw down his gauntlet amongst an insatiable duel displayed in tonight’s livestream.
Whilst the Barbican basked in such welcoming blue and green hues, they might as well have been red, white and blues with the Britten Sinfonia’s rendition of Aaron Copland’s quintessentially-American 1944 piece, ‘Appalachian Spring’. From a time of desperation in this foreign land, the piece effortlessly transcended time and space to today’s desperate environment, performed and recorded brilliantly by tonight’s distanced ensemble. Traversing through myriad soaring highs and wallowing lows, this true slice of American apple pie from across the pond would’ve seen a standing ovation from the orchestral likes of John Williams or Steven Spielberg - had a crowd been permitted into this concert hall, of course.
Instead, rapturous applause was replaced with an unnerving silence filled with a few desperate hand claps, which scarcely seemed fit after the 30-minute odysseian piece which preceded. But who should step into the fray but none other than Shabaka Hutchings, announcing his entrance with a solo improvised piece showcasing a tenacious prowess securely over his clarinet. The fingering and breathing techniques exuded unbridled talent, his focus yielded with such precision, and the technique perplexedly allowed one man to seemingly play the parts of two others.
“I use jazz as a springboard for classical expression.”
The proceeding ten minutes saw Hutchings plough through with little respite, blocking off all else from the outside world, yet protruding various musicalities of his other notable groups to date: The Comet is Coming, Sons of Kemet, and Shabaka & The Ancestors. And once it came time to our classical-jazz collaboration within Copland’s ‘Clarinet Concerto’, such marvellous compliments were exchanged between one another in a probing, challenging piece. Traversing through arduous emotional highways, Hutchings shone in every way possible - from the clarinet cadenza, to the front-and-centre staging, to the deep golds and reds he sported against the comparatively conservative Britten Sinfonia.
Aside from Hutchings’ assertion here, tonight didn’t go without its slight hiccups. The live-streaming situation proved unfortunate, Stravinsky’s 5-minute piece paled in comparison, and some of Hutchings’ notations seemed ill-placed and desperate. But given our wallowing mood packed under months of lockdown, this concert held an uncanny reflection: if such distressing times could bring together Copland and Goodman, as well as Hutchings and the Britten Sinfonia, then why not us? And for Shabaka Hutchings, a watershed moment was achieved tonight: a truly virtuosic, boundary-pushing performer, spearheading our jazz scene with the same temerity of America’s Manifest Destiny which Copeland alluded to all those years ago. Rather than tearing up and segregating each other, however, Hutchings has undoubtedly brought us closer together.
7/10
This concert was part of the Barbican Centre's new concert series ‘Live From The Barbican’ running until 13th December - tickets can be found here.
All photos are courtesy of Mark Allan, whose work can be found here.
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