Terence Blanchard, Django Bates, The BBC Concert Orchestra, Kristjan Järvi

This EFG London Jazz Festival double-bill at the Barbican sees a rare performance of Joe Zawinul’s Stories of the Danube – his grand orchestral vision of one of the world’s great rivers, conducted by his friend Kristjan Järvi and featuring the BBC Concert Orchestra and Terence Blanchard Quintet, with special guest artists to be announced.

Järvi was a close collaborator with Zawinul in the years before his untimely passing a decade ago* and tonight pays tribute to this seminal figure in Jazz as composer, keyboard virtuoso and co-founder of Weather Report.

Also featured in tonight’s concert will be American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer Terence Blanchard’s own new music, performed by his quintet and the BBC Concert Orchestra, featuring the UK premiere performance of the new extended piece Herbie Hancock: By Himself, which is inspired by Hancock’s iconic and impressionistic piano solos, and complemented by music drawn from Blanchard’s score for the recent Robert de Niro movie The Comedians, resonating with the classic Blue Note sound of the 1960s. Herbie Hancock: By Himself is a joint commission between the EFG London Jazz Festival, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Jazztopad Festival in Wroclaw.