CLoSer: Sketches of Miles, Village Underground

How does Gwilym Simcock (Reverie at Schloss Elmau) manage to do it? Mastering classical piano is difficult enough, but to add to that a virtuosic understanding of jazz is something else. In April, he will appear in Shoreditch’s Village Underground as part of the City of London Sinfonia CLoSer’s 2015/16 season. He will be performing a new arrangement of Bach, commissioned specially for the concert.

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But that’s not all. The Sinfonia will show their own versatility, led by clarinetist Michael Collins, a conductor as skilled behind the baton as under it. In celebration of the supreme trumpeter Miles Davis (A Kind of Blue) and his arranger Gil Evans (Out of the Cool), the ensemble will perform sensuous excerpts from their four collaborative albums: Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain and Quiet Nights. These are works legendary both for their grace and their complexity, and contain some of Davis’ most eloquent and accessible music. For anyone curious about the intersection between classical music and jazz, this is one evening not to miss.