Song & Wind Aarhus Jazz Orchestra, Jakob Buchanan, Marilyn Mazur, Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir & Carsten Seyer-Hansen

• 1Song & Wind, Pt. 1: Prelude03:58
• 2Song & Wind, Pt. 1: Songs in the Air07:33
• 3Song & Wind, Pt. 1: Postlude05:02
• 4Song & Wind, Pt. 2: The Stones Make Sand Slow09:23
• 5Song & Wind, Pt. 3: If You Want to Hurt Someone09:01
• 6Song & Wind, Pt. 4: You Have Only Seen How I Begin08:42
• 7Song & Wind, Pt. 5: Rain Falls05:25
• Total Runtime49:04

Info for Song & Wind

Song & Wind is Jakob Buchanan’s fourth major orchestral work, written for Aarhus Jazz Orchestra with Carsten Seyer-Hansen as conductor. This time in collaboration with the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir and Marilyn Mazur and with words by Iain S. Thomas.

In Song & Wind, the Copenhagen Boys Choir gives voice to Buchanan’s elegiac melodies, embraced and complemented by Aarhus Jazz Orchestra’s warm brass- and woodwind sounds. With the addition of Marilyn Mazur’s strong, personal and colourful percussion-paintings, Buchanan has shaped a unique musical encounter:

The boys’ choir sings about longing, doubt and loss. About pain and about time and eternity. I have been inspired by the work of the South African poet, Iain S. Thomas´ and the thoughts and feelings that pop-up my mind – as a husband and a father who thinks back on a long life.

Iain S. Thomas’ small existentialist poems put to a high degree into words, some of what is going on in my world of thought and in many of the discussions about life I have with my wife, Nanna.

Together we have chosen the poems for Song & Wind.

Nature is however, completely independent of man’s world of thought – it is just there. The music is written in the places where I live; in a landscape of soil and fields on Mols, just outside Aarhus, shaped by all the small hills and in the middle of the strong winds from the sea around us. It has also been created on our small farm house in Kornhult, Sweden – surrounded by the darkness of the pine forest, the moss and the bird life.

Marilyn Mazur is invited into the music because, as the musical sorceress that she is, she can shape and accommodate everything in her playing – and thus create both co-play and counter-play in the music.

Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir
Aarhus Jazz Orchestra
Jakob Buchanan, flugelhorn
Marilyn Mazur, percussion
Carsten Seyer-Hansen, conductor

Jakob Buchanan
was born in Viby, Jutland. He was raised in Rosenhøjby his Danish mother and British father. He was the first jazz student ever to be accepted at soloist class of the Royal Academy of Music Aarhus, Denmark. A position from which he has been able to work closely with familiar artists while also creating unexpected con-stellations. His early works were composed for a jazz sextet and released on his first two albums ‘Dreamfactory’ and ‘i’. Since 2008, Jakob Buchanan has been playing and touring with his quartet for longer periods. Percussionist Marilyn Mazur and guitarist Jakob Bro have been members of the Jakob Buchanan Quartet from the beginning.

Bassist Jonas Westergaard replaces pianist Simon Toldam on the latest quartet album ‘Some People & Some Places’. The album was nominated in two categoriesat the Danish Music Awards Jazz 2014: ‘Jazz Album of the Year’, and ‘Jazz Composer of the Year’. For his album ‘Requiem’, Jakob Buchanan won the Danish Music Awards Jazz 2016 ‘Release of the Year’ and ‘Composer of the Year’, and in 2015 the Jazznyt Award.

Jakob Buchanan teaches trumpet and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Aarhus, Denmark and has toured in allScandinavian countrys, Germany, France, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Poland, America, Canada, and Russia. With Marilyn Mazurs Special 4 and the Aarhus Jazz Orchestra. The Requiem: Alarge-scale work which combined elements from the Latin mass for the dead with European choral tradition, Nordic orchestral music and improvisation. In 2001, Jakob Buchanan became the first jazz musician at the Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus to take part in the soloist programme, previously reserved for classical students.

Today he teaches composition in the rhythmic department: ‘In Aarhus, you are part of a diverse environment, where jazz is close to classical music, because the Academy has merged the courses. I have always loved the great works and, when I was a student, I could find a way of sneaking in and attending conductors’ rehearsals with strings and orchestras. I studied Russian for acouple of years at the university, and there I discovered Russian avant-garde art from the beginning of the 20th century, including the painter Malevich, who worked with points, lines and surfaces. When I listen to Bach, Tchaikovsky,

Mahler or James Macmillan today, I can find myself listening for the points, the lines and the surfaces of the music. It can be a new way to experience how works are composed.’ Since Requiem, which also saw the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with choral and orchestral conductor Carsten Seyer-Hansen, several orchestral projects have seen the light of day. In 2017, as mentioned, it was

The Voices from Rosenhill written to celebrate Aarhus 2017 –European Capital of Culture. In 2019, Songs To The Green Land for big band, choir and soloists was performed in Aarhus and Copenhagena co-writng project w. Norwegian drummer Helge Andreas Norbakken. Buchanan has also written and recorded with guitarist Jakob Bro a work for choir and instrumental soloists,that have not yet been published. And a new commission awaits it’s releasea piece for Aarhus Jazz Orchestra and the Copenhagen Royal Chapel Choir under the direction of Carsten Seyer-Hansenand featuring Marilyn Mazur on percussion. Jakob Buchanan has quietly become a new and exciting voice in Danish orchestral music.

Booklet for Song & Wind