The BBC Concert Orchestra, Guy Barker Big Band, Guy Barker

An expat businessman voyages back to London to sell his Soho jazz club, but while spending a final night there he is stopped in his tracks by meeting the ghost of his younger self…

Britten wrote two operas based on ghost stories by Henry James: The Turn of the Screw and Owen Wingrave. Jazz trumpeter and composer Guy Barker, working with author Robert Ryan, takes the completion of a James ghost story trilogy as his starting point for an ambitious new work. From Ryan’s adaptation of James’ short story The Jolly Corner, which weaves both jazz and echoes of Britten operas into its colourful fabric, Barker creates a new,
70-minute suite for the massive combined forces of jazz and symphony orchestras, taking the audience on a taut and dramatic journey.

Co-commissioned by Aldeburgh Music and BBC Radio 3, part of Aldeburgh Music’s Inspired by Britten series.