|
For those of you considering attending the concert with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on the 22nd of June – and that's an awful lot of "Royal" - you might care to know what you will hear. I can assure you that fancy or formal dress will not be required.
For the last couple of years, Steve Nieve and I have been appearing with orchestras from Honolulu to Houston, from Chicago to Baltimore and, most recently, from Nashville to Minnesota. The repertoire has developed and changed radically since the year 2000, when these adventures began.
This concert in Glasgow and another with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic on the 25th of June will be the first to consist almost entirely of orchestral arrangements of songs.
Previously, we featured a 30-minute suite from the ballet score, "Il Sogno" and it had been erroneously stated that half of the Glasgow concert would consist of instrumental music.
However, as a guest of these orchestras, I think it is only good manners that they be heard before I enter the scene and start singing. So only a brief, overture-length excerpt from "Il Sogno" will be played, followed by a programme of songs dating from 1977 to the present day.
These dates will be my first collaboration with these orchestras and the conductor, Clark Rundell. We will also be joined by the rhythm section of Chris Laurence on bass and Martin France on drums with Rob Buckland taking care of the saxophone features in a number of the arrangements.
This team will surely make short work of the more rhythmic songs; a 50s detective-theme arrangement of "Watching the Detectives", Vince Mendoza's psychedelic chart for the Billy Strayhorn composition, "Blood Count", for which I wrote words and re-titled, "My Flame Burns Blue" and the Charles Mingus number, "Hora Decubitus."
These concerts obviously feature more ballad material than rock and roll but both Steve Nieve and I have continued to add to book of arrangements.
Some of this orchestration work was actually done while traveling, as I sensed the elements needed for a more balanced programme.
I wrote the arrangement of "All This Useless Beauty" while trapped in my hotel room by monsoon rains prior to our Honolulu dates of two years ago. Shortly before our last orchestral dates in the autumn of 2007, I arranged a song that I co-wrote with my wife, Diana, called, "The Girl in the Other Room."
Steve Nieve's version of "Greenshirt" is one of my personal favourites, making imaginative use of the woodwind section and calling for one of the percussionists to play an old manual typewriter.
At the end of 2007, I made an orchestral transcription of Chet Baker's trumpet solo from "Shipbuilding" and was amazed to find that with very little additional harmonization, his spontaneous inventions could provide nearly all of the material for the orchestra. In a way, the arrangement is really his work.
There are some songs that lend themselves very obviously to the orchestral setting. We usually feature a couple of songs from the album, "Painted From Memory", a full-string orchestra version of "Still" from "North" and the Charles Azanavour tune, "She."
Some songs have been adapted or re-arranged from my work with the Brodsky Quartet. Richard Harvey – with whom I co-wrote the music for the television drama series, "G.B.H." – provided a beautiful, full-orchestral setting of "Birds Will Still Be Singing" from "The Juliet Letters."
My arrangement of "Almost Blue" was begun for string quartet, as an encore tune on "The Juliet Letters" world tour and has been adapted and expanded until it now features the entire orchestra and closing bars in which I do something unspeakable at the piano, while Steve Nieve takes a solo on the melodica.
The concerts will also include the first full-orchestral performances of three excerpts from "The Secret Songs", an unfinished work that was commissioned by the Royal Danish Opera as part of the Hans Christian Andersen bicentenary celebrations of 2005.
My version of Andersen story centres on his infatuation with the renowned Swedish soprano, Jenny Lind, who provided the inspiration for a number of his most famous tales and yet rejected his romantic advances, which were feeble at best.
In 1850 the "Divine Jenny" Lind undertook an American concert tour, the first of its kind in scope and acclaim, promoted by the showman P.T. Barnum.
There was certainly a marked contrast in the way the two men regarded and were motivated by Lind. Andersen elevated her to a pedestal of virtuous womanhood and artist ideal, while to Barnum she was more of a marketable entity.
One of the themes of Andersen's story - that of a misfit in love with an unattainable woman - was of particular interest to me and can be clearly understood in the three numbers which will be performed.
Gisela Stille, who sang in the Lind part in the Copenhagen premiere of a "work-in-progress" song cycle in 2005, will sing, "How Deep Is the Red?" – an imagined folk riddle performed on the first occasion Andersen encounters the singer.
This will be followed a ballad in which Andersen recounts Lind's romantic rejection. The title of the piece notes Lind's response when Andersen asked why she could not return his love: "She Handed Me a Mirror".
Finally, a duet, "He Has Forgotten Me Completely" – part of a dream in which Andersen imagines Lind performing his "secret songs" – which stand for the tales that she inspired in real life.
The Glasgow concert will be followed by an appearance at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool on the 25th of June.
My Ma worked as an unpaid, volunteer usher at "The Phil" in the late 40s and early 50s, so it is something of a family reunion to be playing at this venerable institution.
| 
