Exclusive Guy Barker, Kurt Elling and Janie Dee video interview: the making of That Obscure Hurt
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
This year’s EFG London Jazz Festival kicked off with another addition of Jazz Voice, the stellar opening gala celebrating the voice in jazz, with a sparkling musical suite of songs composed, arranged and conducted by Guy Barker.
A restlessly creative musician Barker was asked earlier this year to write a piece to celebrate the centenary of iconic composer Benjamin Britten, which in typically inventive fashion the multi-talented trumpeter and composer joined forces with Grammy winning US jazz vocalist Kurt Elling, leading British actress Janie Dee and the BBC Concert Orchestra to take Britten’s operas The Turn of the Screw and Owen Wingrave into unlikely but highly inventive new territory. Jazzwise contributor Ellie Mills interviewed all three leading lights of this new production as they rehearsed for Barker’s That Obscure Hurt; his Britten inspired work that debuted at the Aldeburgh Festival in June this year.