The opening concert of this year’s 21C festival was given by the Imani Winds (Brandon George Rule – flutes, Toyin Spellman-Diaz – oboe, Mark over – clarinet, Kevin Newton – horn and Monica Ellis – bassoon) and pianist Michelle Carr in Mazzoleni Hall on Saturday evening.  It was a programme of 20th and 21st century works with a kind of French/jazz theme.

First up was a playful piece for wind quintet; Paquito D’Rivera’s A Little Cuban Waltz.  Both waltz and jazz influences very much in eveidence here with some rather fun bassoon lines and the horn doung what you might expect a trumpet to do in a jazz band. This was followed by Lalo Schifrin’s La Nouvelle Orléans which riffs off the jazz funeral tradition; starting march like and solemn and gradually becoming more exuberant and celebratory.

Next was the very interesting Poulenc Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano, FP43.  I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard a work scored for this particular combination before!  It has a neo-baroque first movement marked Lent-Presto which is followed by a more lyrical and relaxed Andante con moto.  It concludes with a crazy fast Rondo: très vif which has a really virtuosic piano part.

After the interval came Valerie Coleman’s Portraits of Langdon which celebrates both the Harlem Renaissance and the American presence in Paris in the 1920s.  It intersperses five poems by Hughes (read here by Monica Ellis) with music for flute, clarinet and piano.  So many influences here; jazz of course, swing, gospel, African drumming, all in aid of poems that evoke various scenes from a summer night in Harlem to a brawl in a Paris nightclub.  Really interesting.

The final work on the programme was the Poulenc Sextet FP 100 but I had to skip out at that point to be sure of making the 10pm concert upstairs in Temerty.  All in all a very varied and well played programme for some unusual combinations of instruments.

Photos are not from the concert.  The Imani Winds shot is by Shervin Lainez and the Michelle Cann one by Steven Mareazi Willis.