I’ve involved with David Patrick’s fantastic and challenging project for over a year now. The Jazz Rites of Spring takes Stravinsky’s masterwork and reinterprets it for a jazz ensemble of 3 woodwind, 2 brass and jazz trio. Musically it involves a complete performance of the original written material with sections that have been arranged and opened up for improvising.
I love doing this project as it forces me to use my classical training and jazz abilities in equal measure. The band features some fantastic musicians from the UK and Europe. As the music has no conductor, minimal cueing and with frontline either doubling or trebling we’ve really worked very hard indeed to make the music happen!
Since being asked to be apart of the project we’ve toured all over Scotland as well as having a 5 night run in the Edinburgh Festival where each performance was sold out and people were sadly turned away! We also recorded the project after the run in the Festival and a recording should be coming out later this year.
Upcoming performances for the project include concerts in Germany in March and further performances in the UK later this year.
Here’s a link to David Patrick’s website where you can watch a short video from one of our performances.