EIF 26: Jason Max Ferdinand Singers

Queen’s Hall 10/08/26

Jason Max Ferdinand Singers. John Stoddart (piano), Jason Max Ferdinand (conductor).

“That was just heavenly!” exclaimed a member of the audience streaming out of the Queen’s Hall after a polished and uplifting performance of gospel-adjacent music from the highly accomplished Jason Max Ferdinand Singers, making their solo concert debut at the EIF.

While much of the two hour programme drew on music from the Black Church in America (a phenomenon which crosses religious and cultural barriers, rather than being restrictively Christian), there were also nods in many other musical directions. One of the unexpected highlights was an imaginative, gently swinging re-arrangement of Beethoven’s ‘Hallelujah’ from Christ on the Mount of Olives, Op. 85 (1803), which nevertheless retained both its contrapuntal depth and its own reference back to Handel.

Indeed the remaking of classics and Spirituals in a way that honoured the past while lifting the rafters of the contemporary was a real theme of this adroit selection of songs, plus one strikingly fluent cross-genre piano work – accompanist John Stoddart’s exposition of the traditional nineteenth century Spiritual, ‘Soon I Will Be Done”.

This was followed, in the shorter second half of the programme, by an exquisite high-register account of ‘Misty’, a jazz standard written and recorded in 1954 by pianist Erroll Garner. He composed it as an instrumental in the traditional 32-bar format. But G. Thomas Allen, the historic and only male winner of the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition in 2021, transformed it into a breathtakingly tender accompanied solo vocal work. His control, phasing, and emotional and technical range in one song created four minutes of unalloyed musical magic.

Among the other standouts was James Mulholland’s Keremos (1997), displaying an unashamed Romantic sensibility. Meanwhile, Moses Hogan’s arrangement of ‘Battle of Jericho’ pitter-pattered along with effortlessly crisp and buoyant timing. The last two movements of Stoddart’s own Choral Mosaic I (2024) also impressed with, respectively, sonorous moving piano chords amid swirling voices, and a funk-driven finale.

Conductor and curator Ferdinand, who held everything together with understated ease, got the hall clapping along to that one. And while the emphasis was on melody and harmony throughout, there were a couple of deliciously surprising moments, too. Namely, the expansive full ensemble chord at the end of Adolphus Hailstork’s ‘Oh Praise the Lord’, and the spicy explosion of voices at the end of Jacob Collier’s ‘World O World’, which brought the whole concert to a memorable conclusion.

Overall, it would be no exaggeration to say that the Jason Max Ferdinand Singers wowed a usually restrained Queen’s Hall audience, boosted by a slightly younger and more diverse demographic. Almost every song was greeted with loud applause, whoops and hollers as this elite ensemble of fine singers, arrangers, composers and educators from across the USA came together at short notice to charm Edinburgh by wearing their hearts not just on their sleeves, but on their adaptable vocal chords.