When Martin Taylor and Guy Barker talk about their Spirit of Django Suite they like to point out that the music should "reek of nostalgia". On the Proms premiere of this Django Reinhardt-dedicated guitar concerto – performed by Taylor and his quartet, Barker's big band and the Britten Sinfonia – that unmistakeable aroma certainly permeated the hall.
The suite comprised six Taylor originals inspired by Reinhardt, France and Debussy, Reinhardt's favourite classical composer. Barker's arrangements (he also conducted) inventively balanced the orchestra's rich palette, the big band's brass power, as well as the the virtuoso improvisations of Taylor, his accordionist Karen Street and clarinettist Alan Barnes. The opening Last Train to Hauteville began on a deep strings hum, gradually overlaid by Debussyesque woodwind, followed by a gypsy modal scale for clarinet. Then came a dramatic arrival for the big-band in a welter of muted trumpet riffs, and a stretch of breezily bouncing swing to spur Taylor's first guitar solo. Sinfonia leader Jacqueline Shave's dreamy violin meditation followed, soon to be swept up in the swirl of a (slightly over-long) waltz. Barnes's slinky clarinet variations rivalled Taylor's glittering guitar solos as high points of the show, and a drum-powered Benny Goodman-like swing eruption (in the knockabout Jacques Tati dedication Monsieur Jacques) deftly spliced wit and drama.
The thick textures could have been diluted a little, as Taylor's beautiful solo ballad The Fair Haired Child (quivering with Reinhardt's violin-like tone) hauntingly suggested. But jazz fans got their fix in the brass-blasting modern-swing of Djangobop, and to some extent in the samba-jazz encore on Reinhardt's swoony classic Nuages. The nostalgia infused the music a little too much to spring many surprises – on the whole, jazz Proms rarely seem to – but this was a craftsmanlike tribute to an era when jazz perhaps had a lighter heart.
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