Start with an accomplished jazz composer, add vivid characters from Mozart’s operas, throw in a popular British crime novelist who loves New York City and top it off with San Diego’s near-perfect climate. The intriguing result is Mainly Mozart’s kickoff event for “The Amadeus Project.”
As disparate as these elements may sound, they come together as a seamless piece on trumpeter and composer Guy Barker’s new double CD of the same name. This weekend at the Neurosciences Institute, Barker and crime writer (and fellow Londoner) Robert Ryan will discuss the album and lead a Q&A. Los Angeles-based pianist Roger Kellaway will join Barker on a few musical numbers. Afterward, wine and desserts will be served in the lobby.
“The Amadeus Project” dates to the late 1990s, when Mainly Mozart’s artistic director, David Atherton, invited Barker to play as part of the popular series but said he needed a Mozart link.
“A friend ” an opera and jazz fan ” said to me: ‘Why don’t you compose a series of pieces inspired by Mozart characters?'” Barker said in a recent phone conversation from London. “I have no deep obsession with Mozart; this was just a good opportunity to enjoy some
sunshine.”
The response in San Diego to Barker’s “Amadeus Suite” in 1999 was so positive that Mainly Mozart’s executive director, Nancy Laturno, asked that he return with an expanded work in 2006 for Mainly Mozart’s celebration of its namesake’s 250th birthday.
“The first time, I wrote music inspired by five characters in Mozart’s opera. I found it quite fun because the characters had such definite personalities,” Barker said.
When the BBC subsequently commissioned Barker to compose a big-band piece for the London Jazz Festival, he originally thought of creating music for dancers and searched for an appropriate story.
“I was also working on Amadeus pieces at the time,” Barker said, “and I looked at ‘The Magic Flute.’ I thought: ‘This is completely crazy; this would be fun.’ That’s when I called my friend, Rob Ryan. He came back with a short story set in the 1950s, a jazz noir tale.”
Instead of dancers, the two collaborators opted for a narrator. Because the action takes place in Brooklyn, they asked London-based, Brooklyn-raised Michael Brandon to do the honors. Its title is “dZf,” riffing off “Die Zauberflöte,” the German title of “The Magic Flute.” The BBC radio presentation of “dZf” “” featuring Barker, Brandon and more than a dozen musicians ” got a rave review in one of the major British papers.
In “dZf,” “The Magic Flute’s” main character is transformed into Bobby Tamino, a jazz trumpeter who owes money to mobsters. The Queen of the Night is Queen Righteous, Pamina is Pammy, and the Three Ladies three hookers.
“The three choirboys are three small men who make drugs and give Bobby a potion that makes him play trumpet better than he ever has,” Barker explained. “He goes and plays in a jazz club and that’s how he wins Pammy’s attention. Some of the lines are quite amusing. The story at the end is different ” because it’s jazz, it’s sad. At the same time, it’s all quite fun.”
Barker also performs under Mainly Mozart’s auspices Friday at Tijuana’s Centro Cultural with Kellaway and two stellar San Diego musicians, drummer Duncan Moore and bassist Rob Thorsen. They will play jazz standards and excerpts from “The Amadeus Suite.”
Saturday’s La Jolla event will celebrate the upcoming double CD. One disc features excerpts from “The Amadeus Suite,” arranged for a big band, and the other is “dZf.”
Having premiered “The Amadeus Suite” at the Neurosciences Institute in 1999, Barker remembers the venue vividly.
“When I first played there, I thought: ‘This is a great place to listen to music, but I could get lectured here, too,'” he said with a laugh. “When they told me we were having this presentation there, I thought: `Perfect!’ The author can tell exactly why the characters do what they do and how he came up with the setting.
“Who knows?” Barker mused. “One day maybe we’ll bring all the musicians over and do “dZf” here. This whole thing started in San Diego. As I say in the sleeve notes, it all started with a few coincidences and desire for a gig in the sunshine.”
Excerpts from “The Amadeus Suite” and jazz standards, tomorrow, 8 p.m., IMAX Theatre at Centro Cultural de Tijuana. Call (619) 239-0100, or Centro Cultural de Tijuana, 011-52-664-687-9600.
“The Amadeus Project” free kickoff event (open seating), Saturday, Oct. 6, 7 p.m. Guy Barker, Roger Kellaway and Robert Ryan at the Neurosciences Institute, 10640 John Jay Hopkins Drive. Call (619) 239-0100 for more information.