The ever-youthful British violinist Nigel Kennedy will perform a Bach–Ellington concert with the Orchestra of Life and his self-assembled jazz quintet as part of the Spring Festival at MuPa on 26 March. The Brighton-born virtuoso’s arrangements, which he first played with the London Philharmonic Orchestra last September, take jazz as their starting point rather than veering in the opposite direction, as is usually the way with such genre-defying exercises.
Jazz musicians have long dug improvising on Bach, and Kennedy himself released a Bartok-Ellington LP in the mid-eighties. Although the latest in a long line of classical musicians, there is nothing remotely conventional about Kennedy, however. Proclaimed as the great British classical hope of his generation, he has fought to plough his own furrow since being sent to the Yehudi Menuhin School as a child. He was later moved to the Juilliard School in New York where, aged 16, he was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall with Stefan Grapelli, simultaneously exasperating the classical fraternity and starting out on the maverick career path ahead. Although best known in Britain for a fairly straight cut of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons – which sold two-million copies, a phenomenal feat for a classical record – Kennedy has consistently displayed that lack of concern for concert etiquette and musical boundaries that he shares with the truly gifted. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s Kennedy cut loose and made an album with ex-Duran Duran member Stephen Duffy, released his own interpretations of Doors and Jimi Hendrix songs and cultivated a cartoon persona – along with a deep love for Aston Villa football club – that saw him get his own Spitting Image puppet. Back then he said he considered Jimi Hendrix to be a traditional composer trapped in the traditional rock format: some call Kennedy a jazzman trapped in the classical world.
In the class-obsessed UK, however, footage of Kennedy as a timid child protege with cut glass RP was frequently shown alongside the mockney tones that he adopted later in life. Amid all the condescending laughter, however, his virtuosity and rare gift for shifting styles often went forgotten, when that, after all, was why anyone was listening in the first place. Now married to a Pole, the football-obsessed Krakow resident says he considers Budapest practically a home fixture, so concert goers should expect the usual line in laid-back banter between pieces that has helped endear him to audiences everywhere. As the man says, “we may play dead composer’s work but we don’t have to look like we’re still at the funeral.”

The ticket

Nigel Kennedy will play with the Orchestra of Life and the Nigel Kennedy Quintet featuring saxophonist Tomasz Grzegorski, Adam “Szabas” Kowalewski on double bass, drummer Krzysztof Dziedzic, Orphy Robinson on marimbas and vibraphone, and guitarist Doug Boyle, from 7.30 p.m. on Friday 26 March at the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, Budapest Palace of Arts, District IX, Komor Marcell utca 1. Tickets HUF 3,500-15,000. Info & tickets www.mupa.hu, or on (06-1) 555-

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