Ascension Jazzmass
Ascension - Jazzmass was composed between 1988 and 1990 and received its first performance in the Chapel of the Ascension, Bishop Otter College, Chichester on Ascension Day in 1990. It is a complete setting of the text of the Latin mass, with a final section (Doxology) constructed around an Ascension Day text by the Christian mystic Angelus Silesius.
If upward you can soar
And let God have his way
Then this has in your spirit
Become Ascension Day
The piece uses large forces - female vocalist, 4-part choir, nine-piece jazz ensemble, organ, plus 21 marimba-style xylophones. Ascension is an exuberant and celebratory work in which the choir members are called upon to sing with a wide range of vocal styles, including overtone singing, chanting, calling and free vocal improvisation as well as traditional four-part harmony whilst the jazz ensemble is given plenty of space for improvisation.
The decision to use 21 xylophones originated in a dream in which I found myself in an African village surrounded by the sound of continuous xylophone music. When I asked a villager what the piece was about he explained that it was the “Music of Life” and, should it stop, the world would come to an end. Each member of the tribe had his or her own motives to play and could come in or out of the piece at will. This link between musical structures and the life force appealed to me with its resemblance to creation myths in which the world is sung or intoned into being. The number 21 is part of an overall numerological sequence which permeates the structures of the music.
The popular conception of jazz as a semi-commercial form of entertainment music has always been wide of the mark. From its roots in spirituals, gospel and blues, via the sacred concerts of Duke Ellington, the Love Supreme of John Coltrane, the Mahavishnu of John McGlaughlin to the contemporary abstract earth spirit of Jan Garbarek, jazz has always been music of profound spiritual dimensions.
The celebration and structure of the Latin Mass has roots which stretch back to ancient sacrificial rituals, the functions of which were to renew the people’s relationship with the earth, the flow of life, the reality of death and the transcendental nature of belief. Such rituals, in their ever-changing forms, provide vehicles for physical, emotional and spiritual renewal.
Renewal is the hallmark of jazz in its continuously evolving semi-improvised forms and also of Ascension Jazzmass in which the old and the new embrace. Archaic techniques such as overtone chanting and tribal xylophoning take their place alongside modernist structures - free-form improvisation, atonality, serialism and minimalism. Alonhside, we experience blues, swing, jazzrock and be-bop. As well as echoes of Byzantine hymnody, medieval polyphony and even nineteenth century chorale.
This breadth of styles is unified by three ideas - a calling motive heard at the very beginning; ascending chords of D flat, E flat and F which provide the Lydian harmonic framework which permeates the whole work; and a rising 4-note melodic cell heard at the beginning of the Credo. The score is fully notated for soloist, choir and organ whilst leaving plenty of space for the jazz musicians to improvise, both freely and within defined chord structures.
Ascension Jazzmass was performed to a capacity audience in the Turner Sims Concert Hall, University of Southampton in March 2000. A double CD of this performance (£15.00 plus £2.00 p&p) can be obtained by emailing info@lifemusic.org with your details.