Tony Haynes has just begun working with artists in preparation for September 25th’s show, If Paradise at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. If Paradise bridges the musical traditions of East and West. It dramatises the stark contrasts of culture and religious belief, tenderness and brutality, that lie behind contemporary events, as experienced by the people caught up in them – giving the work a poignant resonance in the month that marks the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
After spending several days last month in the studio putting the finishing touches to the If Paradise CD, it’s been interesting getting to grips with the music itself again at first hand – and the subject matter.
I held the first rehearsals last week with the singers, and it struck me very forcibly how much more the voices of Lucy Rahman and Akash Sultan have developed and matured. In an All About Jazz review, Chris May once called them “transcendentally beautiful”, but even that’s an understatement. There is a subtlety and power in Sultan’s voice in particular – and a confidence – that wasn’t there before, but it’s the two of them together that is so magical, each complementing and supporting the other.
These songs were orginally created for them, and their voices and the artistic bond between Lucy and Sultan were the inspiration for them, and the story they tell. I discovered long ago that to preserve the authentic characteristics of any singing style, you have to write in the language familiar to the singer, so we commissioned lyrics to Bengali; they are also mostly composed on Indian ragas.
Nevertheless, singing in duet, counterpoint and against shifting harmony – let alone my idiosyncratic melodies! - is quite a challenge for a South Asian artist. You can hear them or watch them below -
- but remember these recordings are ‘before’ rather than ‘after’! What you will hear at the QEH when they sing live will indeed transcend the occasion, I can promise you.
The second thing that sent shivers downt the spine was hearing Alison Crookendale sing again the words “Behind them, the ruined towers lie breached and broken, small and careful lives gone beneath the rubble” – a reminder that If Paradise has perhaps even more immediacy and relevance now than when it was first performed eight years ago, as we hear the latest news in the long-running tragedy that is the West’s relationship with the Middle East.
I’m writing this on a day exactly ten years later, but contrary to what you might think, this is not a reference to the destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York. David Bradford actually wrote these words over twenty years earlier, specifically relating to the other ’9/11′ Tuesday - September 11th 1973, when Allende was overthrown and assassinated in Chile.
Art has an uncanny capacity for anticpating history.
So you can imagine how I’m looking forward to assembling the rest of the performers this week – the joyous brass ensemble, the gifted improvisers, the invention and subtlety of the South Asian musicians, and one of the most exciting and powerful rhythm sections in the business…
Tony Haynes
September 11th
For more details on If Paradise and to book tickets for the show, click here.
You can also visit our website here, and find more live performance footage here.
