Review: BBC PROMS: CHINKEKE! ORCHESTRA WITH ANGEL BLUE, Royal Albert Hall
The American soprano made an emotional return to the Proms
Having only been established in 2015, it's important to remember the impact of the Chineke! Orchestra on classical music. Not only championing Black and ethnically diverse musicians, it also celebrates composers of Black and ethinically diverse heritage, giving deserved praise to often overlooked talent.
Last night's Proms shone a light on Edmund Thornton Jenkins, an incredibly gifted American composer and musician who died tragically young at 32, just as his career was really taking off. His incomplete "Ballet" was the first piece of the night, reworked and rearranged by his great nephew Tuffus Zimbabwe.
The opening "Processional" blended a cinematic sounding opening, with dramatic brass into a jaunty and more breezy style, with a second movement, bright and lilting with hints of romance. It is unfortunate that the finale of "Danse générale" is rather forgettable, still sounding as though it needs work to round it out further.
Photo Credit: BBC/ Mark Allan
Then entered the always-charismatic American soprano Angel Blue, starting off with Samuel Barber's "Knoxville: Summer of 1915". Full of nostalgia, child-like wonder and confusion, Blue captured Barber's evocative musical recreation of a 1938 prose poem well. She has a lovely rapport with the audience and clearly has huge affection for the Proms, becoming visibly emotional at points.
A quick dress change then saw renditions of pure crowd-pleasers: George Gershwin's "Love Is Here To Stay", Richard Rodgers's "My Funny Valentine", Irving Berlin's "Puttin' on the Ritz" (credit to Richard Kelley’s wonderful trumpet solo) and Harold Arlen's "That Old Black Magic", with an unexplained absence of the billed "Four Songs" by Margaret Bond. Although entertaining, these were not the best fit for Blue's voice, which lacks the lower range and smokier elements needed to really sing jazz.
I have huge admiration for Blue, having seen her perform many times before, but last night her voice failed to carry sufficiently across the hall. Having re-listened to the recording on BBC Sounds, her voice sounds clearer than it did in situ, but there is still a slightly muffled and muted quality. She knows how to project in this venue, so I am inclined to blame the sound mixing, as the volume and strength of the vocals simply failed to match that of her brilliant 2024 appearance at the Last Night.
Photo Credit: BBC/ Mark Allan
After the interval was a huge key-change with Dvořák's "Symphony No.8", bright and optimistic and played with huge vigour and energy throughout. Jonathon Hayward is a wonderful conductor and really gets under the surface of this sometimes seemingly simple piece of music, to reveal the multiple layers beneath. It is structurally very ambitious and challenges the orchestra at unexpected points, particularly the cellos, which carry much of the melodic weight.
Hayward conducted this piece without a baton and allowed his hands to continually signal intricate messages to the orchestra; he is a very expressive conductor and radiated that to Chineke! Orchestra, who absorbed it into their brilliant rendition of the piece. The second movement shone a light on the beautiful back-and-forth between flute and clarinet and the trumpets were simply triumphant in the finale. A vibrant and energising end to a mixed evening.
The BBC Proms continues at The Royal Albert Hall until 13 September
Photo Credits: BBC/ Mark Allan
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