Mark-Anthony Turnage & John Scofield Scorched

Mark-Anthony Turnage (composer)

Hugh Wolff (conductor)

John Scofield (electric guitar)

John Patitucci (bass)

Peter Erskine (drums)

1. Make Me 1

2. Make Me 2

3. Kubrick

4. Away With Words

5. Fat Lip 1

6. Fat Lip 2

7. Deadzy

8. Trim

9. Nocturnal Mission

10. Let's Say We Did

11. The Nag

12. Cadenza

13. Gil B643 (dedicated to Gil Evans)

14. Protocol

Released January 13, 2004

Recorded Live at Alte Oper, Frankfurt, Germany, September 7, 2002

Genre Jazz, Classical

Length 63:53 (CD)

Label DG Deutsche Grammophon

British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage cites Bach, Stravinsky, Louis Andriessen and Ligeti among his influences. He also admits to being unable to play jazz, but can't help being drawn to John Scofield's brand of funk fusion. An early venture into such territory produced "Bass Inventions", premiered by Dave Holland in Amsterdam in May 2001. There followed "Blood on the Floor", commissioned by Ensemble Modern and conducted by Sir Simon Rattle soon after taking his position as Chief Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Such is Turnage's reputation. "Blood on the Floor" was written for John Scofield, Peter Erskine and Martin Robertson, names that reappear in his work with comforting regularity, for example, Erskine also appears on Turnage's "Fractured Lines". Turnage continues as Research Fellow in Composition at the Royal College of Music and is also now Composer in Residence with the London Philharmonic plus Mead Composer in Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

"Scorched" (SCofield ORCHestratED) premiered in September 2002 with the hr-Sinfonieorchester and hr-Big Band, conducted by Hugh Wolff. The hr-Big Band is not unfamiliar with contemporary and even jazz musics. They have recently gone on to record the music of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra with original drummer Billy Cobham. Turnage says, "[Scorched] came about very slowly, in fact. Two of the movements were actually encores for Blood on the Floor, based on Scofield tunes. When we went on tour with Blood on the Floor we were playing these encores; I told John it would be great if I could do loads more of his tunes and he was really supportive and fantastic about it and just said, let's do it. So this actually goes back to 1996, and I just started doing these encores from then on. I was doing my opera, Silver Tassie, which took quite a few years. I actually did these movements for relaxation. John and I would talk about which ones he liked, and we went back and forth. I knew his work so well, I was like a kid in a sweet shop, I just had to choose what I really wanted to arrange. So that's how it happened." Turnage and Scofield are masters at extrapolation and extension of existing motifs, "Blood on the Floor" itself out of a 10-minute piece. "Yeah, the original movement was nine minutes, and there was no jazz in it; It was purely Ensemble Modern. And it was their idea for me to work with jazz musicians. I had never worked with a proper improviser before. So it all really started from that point in the mid-90s. There was much less improvising in Blood on the Floor, it was purely my music; Scorched obviously relies much more on another person, which I've never done before. I've never done a joint project before." That's quite a few firsts, including the Grammy nomination "Scorched" received for "Best Classical Crossover Album". The shocker is that it didn't win.

Scorched is simply one of the most successful projects to attempt fusion of Modern and Classical musical styles. In the jazz sphere, it is easily on a par with McLaughlin's "Apocalypse", Mann's "Concerto Grosso In D Blues" and Ellington's more orchestral pieces like "The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse". In rock, I've always thought that Caravan used the New Symphonia superbly to stratify the climax to "For Richard" and there was something endearing about Deep Purple's unsophisticated but quite beautiful early efforts on their 1969 "Concerto for Group and Orchestra" which in parts used the rock group to augment the orchestra rather than the more typical other way round. But, like putting a sitar in a pop tune or adding strings to a rock anthem, it's not really fusion until a new form emerges from the elemental mixture. "Scorched" avoids the usual pitfalls of marrying disparate musicians rather fiendishly. On the whole, it doesn't. Instead, motifs and themes are played through in classical style, stretching the orchestral range, resorting to percussive plucking from the first violins, cellos and basses, before their alternative but highly similar interpretation is played by the jazz trio. Trio and orchestra do meet on the same score page, but when they do a basis for their communication has already been established through recognition of the differences as much as of their harmonic potential.

One is always prone to making comparisons when thinking about crossover projects like this one. It's inevitable that "funky", "rocking", "swinging" string sections are evocative of the movies, and indeed they do funk it up like Quincy Jones (The Anderson Tapes) and add more acidity than Jerry Goldsmith (Planet of the Apes). But how does the music stand on its own? The answer is "very well indeed". It has such exciting crashing waves of sound, natural surges of energy, that only the dead could not appreciate its vibrancy. And if it doesn't blow your socks off then you'd better check your pulse. How can you not feel Scofield's smudgy squirting angular lines fitting perfectly in harmony with Patitucci's squidgy bass? Every nuance echoed and played to it's wonderful conclusion by the mighty Erskine.

At their concert at the magnificent Usher Hall in Edinburgh as part of the "Scorched" tour, this time with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Steven Asbury, the soundboard engineer told me that the full program had not made it on to the released live CD album, but he had a "tape". This could be one of those golden chalices yet to be unearthed many years from now, and what gorgeous gems it may hold.