Bach to the Future – a Four-Part Invention
VICTORIA KINGHAM
It seems to me exceptional the way that musicians in this part of the world seem happy to link up, be open to, and enjoy each other’s particular unique talents. So it is that previously in this paper I have featured Josephine Davies – sax player and mountaineer extraordinaire, and reviewed Jason Yarde, formidable jazz saxophonist well known on the UK circuit, now recovered from an unexpected stroke almost two years ago. Today they play not jazz but improvisations on a theme by Bach, teaming up with local impresario and near-genius violinist Max Baillie. Gradually Hastings music is getting known nationally, as the opera companies and the orchestra make their way to sharp London venues, and Max also gets a comprehensive slot in noted music magazine Strad. You can see his own detailed description of the ideas behind the Stargate concert at https://tinyurl.com/enz5ba9j. This is so good, undiluted from the mouth of the composer himself, that it makes anything I can say pretty redundant.
Left to right: Josephine Davis, Tamar Osborne, Max Baillie, Jason Yarde
HOW IT WORKED
Still, I can say that though I think the church should be overflowing for this event, it’s pretty full for a Sunday afternoon in St Leonards and really ever so buzzy. Besides Yarde and Davies there is Tamar Osborne playing the baritone saxophone which came into its own as a solo instrument during the 1930s, played by Harry Carney in Duke Ellington’s band. The three horn players (all composers, teachers, and bandleaders in their own right) together make up a group called JATAJ (JAson, TAmar, and Josephine?) and listening to Max’s lucid introduction to the performance puts the audience into a state of keen anticipation. He explains that the various movements, dense with ever-shifting harmonies, are not exactly what you would call catchy. Each movement is followed by its double (by Bach) that is, a variation that follows the same chord progression as the original. For each movement Baillie himself has inserted a ‘Triple’, and JATAJ elaborate with an improv of their own. Interestingly, their first extended tone sounds a discord that Bach might have written into the score on the way to a melodic resolution. But, held for a long time, its eeriness sets the tone for the first improv session.
It’s a very unusual juxtaposition of styles and ideas, but because these players are all expert musicians and know their Bach, it works well, flowing through to the next movement and Baillie’s next section. This links two parts of the Partita’s corrente in reverse, with Baillie’s section and the saxophone improv in between. And so it goes on, forming an indescribably lovely and unique whole, a pattern of tones, discords, counterpoints and occasional resolutions. The whole thing, Baillie explains, is an exploration of the original partita “through the prism of contemporary music”. The three saxophonists process to the back of the church in the middle, and come back up to the front for the end, which lands quietly, not on a resolution but a transitional harmony, as though there is an infinity to follow.
THE STARGATE, THE UNIVERSE
The title Through the Stargate, explains Baillie, “is a reference to Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey where the astronaut, David, gets sucked through a black hole and spat out the other end and when he gets there, he sees familiar things but they’re all warped and super-weird. And I wondered what Bach would sound like through that Stargate.”
Baillie plays Bach intently, as though there has never been music since – and in a way that’s true. Bach was attempting to compose the music of the spheres, for God, and using the whole range of the violin to reach out beyond the music to something ethereal, divine, eternal. Given that Bach was about 300 years ahead of his time, I dare say Baillie’s development is something closer to what he would be writing if he were alive now: warped and super-weird it might well be. I loved it, for its unrepeatability as much as for its invention.
Other St Leonards Concerts performances are detailed at stlconcerts.co.uk. The next one sees the return of the wonderful Lodestar Trio. See details at lodestartrio.com/about. Baillie’s article in The Strad can be found on a search at thestrad.com. You’d be sorry to miss any of these.
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