EIF 26: First Night at the Hub
The Hub 10/8/26
Nicola Benedetti (violin), Ken Burns (speaker), Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Anna Dennis (soprano), Kirill Gerstein (piano), Karina Canellakis (violin), Dána, Jason Max Ferdinand Singers
One of the most eagerly anticipated events of the Festival: a surprise late night line-up of artists hosted by Festival Director Nicola Benedetti in the intimate surroundings of the Hub. It’s a microcosm of the Festival: you’re not sure who you’re going to see, but you know it will be unforgettable. This year it reached new creative heights.
We began with Nicola Benedetti playing the plaintive ‘Ashokan Farewell’ . Sounding like a Scottish lament, it was composed by American Jay Unger and used as title music for Ken Burns’ documentary ‘The Civil War’. Then Ken Burns spoke eloquently and movingly about the links between the Scottish Enlightenment and the Declaration of Independence.
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with drummer Domo Branch stormed the stage with jazz standard ‘Take the A Train’ by Billy Strayhorn, followed by the laid-back ‘Blues for the World’ composed by Branch for the Festival. The best jazz I’ve ever heard. In complete contrast, soprano Anna Dennis, fresh from her performance of Mary Magdalene with the Dunedin Consort, gave us two perfect songs by Debussy and Wagner with Kirill Gerstein on piano. She was then joined by Benedetti for one of the ‘Seven Romances on Poems by Alexander Blok, Op. 127’ by Dmitri Shostakovich.
Then Benedetti played ‘Nicola’s Strathspey’, the gorgeous but fiendishly difficult fourth movement of ‘Fiddle Dance Suites’ written for her by Wynton Marsalis, with elements of jazz, blues, and folk. She was then joined by Karina Canellakis for five dancing violin duets by Shostakovich. Another luxury pairing. The combination of superb musicians, many (including Benedetti and Canellakis) playing together for the first time, was intoxicating.The whirlwind nature of the Festival meant some had no time to rehearse together, the resulting performances rich in spontaneity.
Canellakis and Gerstein reprised ‘Blues’, the second movement from Ravel’s ‘Violin Sonata no.2 in G’ which they had just performed as an encore at the Usher Hall. Stunning. Then excellent young female Scottish trad folk group Dána played a short set, with Benedetti sliding smoothly into ‘Blackford Hill’: not dominating, but adding another dimension to the music and clearly relishing the opportunity to play with the young musicians. This year we heard more from Nicola Benedetti, which is always a very good thing, whether as soloist or joyously collaborating with others in a deeply sympathetic way, embodying the true spirit of the Festival.
The glorious Jason Max Ferdinand Singers uplifted us with spirituals ‘Didn’t it Rain’ and ‘On the Other Side’. Finally, musicians and singers combined in an arrangement of ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ by J.W. and J.R. Johnson (known as the Black National Anthem) in which every individual and group was heard. Folk, classical, Gospel and jazz musicians and singers joining together.
“All Rise” - the audience certainly did, in a cheering, whooping, stomping standing ovation. I checked to see if the roof of the Hub was still on. On this evening of great riches, I felt I was sitting in on a music session between friends old and new, up close and very personal.
photo credit: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan
