Our performance this summer of my piece Holding was a world premiere, although I've actually performed it dozens of times before! To explain, my son Rowan was born a few months ago, and part of the daily routine is for me to take him for a walk round our local park in Berlin. This can take up to two hours – depending on how successfully I can get him to sleep! – so I started thinking about how to use that time creatively, getting into the habit of trying to invent melodies and various musical things in my head, and then writing them down when I get back home. 

One of the routes in the park is a circular running track. Whilst on this I thought I'd write the most incredibly simple thing I could, something that would seem like it had a constant cycle – going round and round – with the connections being disguised by the piece having an irregular length. Each bar has exactly the same rhythm, and I realised that this never-ending cycle would hopefully be most useful in the (considerable!) efforts to put little Rowan to sleep each night … so I have sung this to him dozens of times, but never actually played it on an instrument – hence a world premiere but not a first performance! 

Usually I like the pieces I write to have an arc and a clear narrative journey, but this one is just meant to exist and hopefully be pleasing to listen to. I hope you enjoy it, but please do try to remain awake!

_{Note by Gwilym Simcock}

Pianist Makoto Ozone is equally at home in jazz and classical idioms. Kato’s Revenge dates from the jazz-focused early part of Makoto Ozone's career. Ozone first recorded the work in 1986 for his album After. It later featured on his 1995 album with vibraphonist Gary Burton, Face to Face.

‘Kato’ is an abbreviation of the composer’s first name. The piece is notable for its catchy melodies, its rhythmic ingenuity and energy and – despite the title’s mention of revenge – its playful mood. Simon Carrington’s arrangement makes inventive use of the shimmering timbre of marimbas and vibraphones. It can be heard on the LSO Percussion Ensemble’s 2020 album Quartet Quintet (LSO Live).

_{Note by Kate Hopkins}

Makoto Ozone
^{b 1961}

Majoring in jazz composition and arrangement, Makoto Ozone graduated from Berklee College of Music in 1983. The same year, he gave a solo recital at Carnegie Hall and released his first album OZONE. His album with Gary Burton, Virtuosi, was nominated for a Grammy in 2003. He was awarded the Shiju-HouShyou (The Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon) in 2018.

'I composed Forever as an accompanying piece to my song Unconditionally (a song dedicated to my mother). Forever expands upon the gratitude that I express to her for nurturing my musicality in my early childhood.  When I was three years old, my mother was a dancer in a Ghanaian West African Dance Troupe, and I would dance with them on a few of their shows, becoming the ‘baby’ of the troupe.  Those dances are embedded in my soul, especially the grounding drumming rhythms of the Atsiagbekor dance of the Ewe-speaking people of Southern Ghana, Togo and Benin.  It is this sound that opens the piece, forever combining my earliest memories of my love for dance and music.'

^{Note by Ayanna Witter-Johnson}

It was a great privilege to be asked by Neil Percy to write some music for a concert in 2019, and especially exciting to write for a group of such fantastic musicians. I had a bit of a ‘blank canvas’, so in the interests of variety I decided to compose a suite for us to play, choosing the theme of some of my favourite groups from the history of jazz, including Weather Report, The Yellowjackets and Steps Ahead.

I wanted to write something that conveyed the energy and joy of these bands. Those two elements are definitely right at the top of my list of musical priorities when I choose the music I like to listen to myself. The suite includes some space for me to improvise, as this juxtaposition of through-composed and improvised music is what feels musically ‘home’ for me. The idea is to make the composed element feel open and spontaneous, and to give the improvisations form and structure. Hopefully it isn’t always obvious which parts are improvised and which parts have been composed. I hope you enjoy it!

_{Note by Gwilym Simcock}

Gwilym Simcock
^{b 1981}

Winner of many awards for his playing and composition Gwilym Simcock moves effortlessly between jazz and classical, creating a sound that is very much his own. He works with orchestras, choirs, big bands, small ensembles and musicians from all areas of music including jazz, folk, pop and classical combining through-composed elements with improvisation.

Recommended Listening

Gwilym Simcock Suite for Percussion Quintet: IV

Ayanna Witter-Johnson

Some composers defy succinct definition, and shoehorning Ayanna Witter-Johnson into a tidy profile is no mean feat. Her music blurs boundaries between classical and alternative RnB - two genres that rarely coexist -and you are just as likely to find her singing while playing the cello, as you are to find her poring over an orchestral score. This remarkable confluence of styles stems from a childhood that was saturated with music of every shape and colour. ‘My Dad and Uncle are DJs and my Mum loves to sing,’ says Ayanna, ‘so I embraced a pretty healthy diet of classical piano and cello studies while absorbing pop culture, soul, jazz, reggae, hip-hop and RnB music throughout my childhood and until now.’  

Witter-Johnson was just three years old when her mother spotted an aptitude for music and took her to her first piano lesson, and she took up the cello as her second instrument (now very much her first) when she was thirteen. She went on to graduate with a first from both Trinity Laban and the Manhattan School of Music, and in 2009 was featured as an Emerging Artist in Residence at London’s Southbank Centre.  Since then, she has been commissioned by the Ligeti Quartet, Kronos Quartet and London Symphony Orchestra, collaborated with Anoushka Shankar and Courtney Pine, and been nominated for a MOBO award. She cites Bob Marley and Stevie Wonder among her greatest influences as readily as she does Bach and Debussy, and while many of her works chronicle her experience as a female artist in the 21st century, she is also no stranger to tackling issues of social oppression and globalisation. Her music is impossible to label (and why should we?) but its guiding principle is one of authenticity and personal truth.  

^{Profile by Jo Kirkbride}

Recommended Listening

Ayanna Witter-Johnson Rise Up