One hundred years ago, the African-American music called Jazz exploded onto the international scene and changed the world forever. Performed by the English Symphony Orchestra and filmed in period costume with atmospheric lighting, Conductor, Kenneth Woods, said; "As we prepare to celebrate the dawn of a New Year, the English Symphony Orchestra is looking back 100 years to the wild musical terrain of the Jazz Age and to how a musical revolution, which started with Ragtime in Arkansas, took hold in Berlin, Vienna and Paris."
Available free-of-charge for four days. Afterwards available in the English Symphony Orchestra Digital Archive.
Eubie Blake - Blake was one of American music’s most enduring figures, contributing to the Ragtime revolution and the emergence of Jazz, his performing career spanned almost the entire 20th century. Credited with coining the expression shortly after his 100th birthday “If I’d known I was gonna live this long, I would have taken better care of myself” - his Charleston Rag remains one of the cornerstones of American music.
Jelly Roll Morton - The self-proclaimed ‘inventor of jazz’, New Orleans-born Jelly Roll Morton was a pianist of rare ability, a performer of supreme charisma, and a composer and arranger of genius. His 1925 composition ‘Black Bottom Stomp’ was a response to the “Black Bottom” dance craze that swept America in the ‘Roaring 20s’, given a bit of spice via Morton’s trademark ‘Spanish tinge’.
Erwin Schulhoff - Schulhoff was one of the first European composers to embrace American music, and his Suite for Chamber Orchestra is a brilliant and witty romp with movement titles including ‘Shimmy’, ‘Tango’ and ‘Stomp’. Included in his large percussion section are a bicycle horn and a siren whistle.
Ernst Krenek - By 1920, Krenek had already staked out a reputation as a modernist firebrand – married for a time to Mahler’s daughter and hailed by many as the heir to Schoenberg. But when he embraced Jazz in his opera ‘Jonny spielt auf’, he achieved a true succès de scandale, and the controversial opera would take Central Europe by storm, becoming the biggest hit of the 1920s before it was banned by Hitler in 1933. The English Symphony Orchestra made the first complete recording of Krenek’s concertante works for piano and orchestra (his four piano concertos, Concerto for 2 Pianos, Double Concerto for piano and violin, and Little Concerto for organ and chamber orchestra) with pianist Mikhail Korzhev in 2016-7. Those recordings earned a string of international accolades, including being chosen as one of the Sunday Times Best Recordings of 2016 and one of Forbes Magazine’s Top 11 Recordings of 2017.
Darius Milhaud - Mihaud looked further south for the inspiration for his surreal ballet, ‘Le boeuf sur le toit’ (‘The Ox on the Roof’), borrowing extensively from the South American repertoire of bossa novas and tangos. He later re-worked the ballet into a stupendously virtuosic violin concerto, performed here by the English Symphony Orchestra's Leader, Zoë Beyers.
Kenneth Woods, Artistic Director/Principal Conductor - Hailed by Gramophone Magazine as “a symphonic conductor of stature”, American conductor Kenneth Woods was appointed Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the English Symphony Orchestra in 2013, and has quickly built up an impressive and acclaimed body of work with them. Woods is also Artistic Director of both the Colorado MahlerFest – the only US organisation other than the New York Philharmonic to receive the International Gustav Mahler Society’s Gold Medal – and the Elgar Festival in Worcester, England.
Zoë Beyers, Leader/Violin Soloist - South-African born Zoë Beyers has established a reputation as one of the finest violinists of her generation. She is based in the UK and performs as soloist, chamber musician, director and orchestral leader across the world. 2018’s BBC Proms saw Zoë lead the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo and Karina Canellakis, the BBC Philharmonic under Juanjo Mena and give two performances of Stravinsky’s ‘L’histoire du soldat’ with the Hebrides Ensemble. In 2020, she also took on the role of Leader with the BBC Philharmonic, a position she holds currently with her role at the English Symphony Orchestra. Since her solo debut aged eleven with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under Paavo Järvi, she has performed as soloist with many distinguished conductors throughout Europe and Africa.