Video interview with Jason Yarde on how he came to jazz clarinet and composition
20 LSO Season 09/10
Jason Yarde: how
being a wayward
child led to a
‘golden clarinet’
My connection with the saxophone
started when I was about eight and
I found the cover of a Sidney Bechet
album in a record shop. Bechet
was wearing a white suit, holding
what I thought at the time was a
golden clarinet, but it was a soprano
saxophone. That initial image planted
a seed, although I didn’t pick up the
saxophone until later.
The main reason I gravitated towards
jazz was because I discovered I was a kind
of wayward child who flirted and flitted
between many different musical styles.
Jazz was like the foster parent willing to take
on such a wayward child. Thankfully, the way
music is developing now, genres and boxes
are much less of an issue, and I’m able to
go and work with the LSO. Whether you’re
working with an orchestra, a jazz orchestra
or a punk band, it’s about finding your own
distinctive voice and style, and trying to
feed that into whatever ensemble you’re
working with. Where you come from, your
upbringing, things you’ve listened to, all
these things inform you as a musician and
give you your voice. And what attracted
me to jazz was that there’s more freedom
for improvisation, for injecting more of
your personality.
Working with the LSO on this Trumpet
Concerto has been a great opportunity to
work with a recognised body of musicians
who share a collective vision of excellence.
It’s great to come in with a score and see
how they interpret it and feed their energy
into it. I’ve been to their concerts and
sat in on rehearsals to get a feel for the
strengthsof the LSO. In this piece I’m trying
to highlight their strengths, and to impose
my own accent on it but let the Orchestra do
what they do. As I work with trumpeter Hugh
Masekela and the LSO on the Concerto, the
most important thing is to make them all
comfortable with the music, and give them
a good chunk of cake that they can get
their teeth into.
It’s a fantastic experience working with
someone like Hugh, to be able to feed off
him and tap into his experience. A lot of
passages allow Hugh to improvise, while
passages the Orchestra play are based on
phrases Hugh will play in his improvised
solos. Although they’re written out, the
orchestral passages will sound like they are
being improvised, and Hugh’s improvisations
will sound as if they’re written, so the lines
are blurred. Ultimately, I hope Hugh is happy
doing his thing, and the Orchestra are happy
doing theirs, and together it will make a
beautiful sound.
Jason Yarde is just one of several artist/
composers featured this season which
also includes John Adams (Sun 7 and
Thu 11 Mar), André Previn (Sun 25 Apr)
and Thomas Adès (Sun 6 Jun).
Jason Yarde’s Rude Awakening and Trumpet
Concerto performed by Hugh Masekela,
and his arrangements of urban folk songs
performed by the LSO Community Choir
can be heard on on Thursday 10 December.
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