Work of the Week - Mátyás Seiber: Improvisations

This year, the Young Euro Classic 2009 Festival includes a performance of Improvisations for Jazzband and Orchestra by Mátyás Seiber and Johnny Dankworth by the German Federal Jazz Orchestra and the German Federal Youth Orchestra in Berlin, on August 23rd. This concert will kick off these two ensembles’ tour, which takes them to South Africa via the German cities of Bonn and Stuttgart. Dennis Russell Davies will conduct these ensembles in Germany, and Bernd Ruf will conduct in South Africa.

The program for Improvisations’ 1965 premiere already called the work "the most successful attempt to mix 20th century classical music and jazz." This makes it fit perfectly with the theme of "Synthesis," which the two ensembles have adopted for their tour. This topic came about both from the 20th anniversary of the reunion of West and East Germany and from the World Cip Soccer tournament, which is to be held in South Africa in 2010.

There are more reasons that Seibers piece is fitting for the program of the German Youth Jazz Orchestra and the German National Youth Orchestra: Seiber was a driving force in the establishment of jazz in musical education, founding the first German academic jazz program in Frankfurt in 1927. Seiber is also biographically connected to South Africa: tragically, he died there in a car accident during a lecture tour.

In Improvisations, Seiber connected and synthesized many diverse musical influences: from the Hungarian tradition of his teachers Bartók and Kodály to new paradigms such as serial music and dodecaphony, and also to popular genres such as jazz, folk, and film music. The piece is a collaboration with Jonny Dankworth, an English jazz composer and saxophonist who played with musicians such as Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan, Lionel Hampton, and Ella Fitzgerald. In their collaborative work, Dankworth’s jazz parts and Seiber’s symphonic parts alternate and overlap. The jazz section fits into the improvisations of the orchestra, which written out in detail, allowing both groups to play off each other and ultimately come to a synthesis. 

• Mátyás Seiber - Profil
• Young Euro Classic
• Bundesjazzorchester