On 2 February 2025, we sold out the Purcell Room at London’s Southbank Centre with the second performance of our centenary tribute to the great African American author and activist James Baldwin.
In the room was journalist Jane Cornwell, who we asked to write a guest piece for our blog with her take on the performance. What follows is her exploration of the creative process, perspective on Baldwin and his contemporary resonance, and reflections on the concert itself:
Vocalist Lucy-Anne Daniels was 15 when James Baldwin changed her life. “I remember finishing his novel Giovanni’s Room in my room and sitting there stunned by his creativity and the power of his work,” she tells a gathering of guests at a pre-show reception outside the Purcell Room, where NYJO’s The Fire Next Time! – a celebration of Baldwin’s life and love of music – is bookending the Southbank Centre x Montreux Jazz Festival weekend.
“When the idea to celebrate Baldwin’s life and his centennial came along, I knew I had to be involved.”
Having first sung lead vocals for NYJO aged 16 before going on to dazzle audiences internationally, the Leeds-born, Birmingham-based Daniels, now 21, was asked by Vikki Maudave, NYJO’s Head of Programmes, if she might step into the role of curator and create the piece from scratch. This would involve fleshing out ideas and themes with musicians from NYJO’s Emerging Professionals scheme, all of whom had answered a shout-out for participants, alongside the project’s musical director, pianist/composer Peter Edwards.
Nerves or no nerves, Daniels dived in.
“I knew it was something I’d enjoy doing. I deep dived into Baldwin’s novels, essays, letters and interviews; I watched his films and documentaries,” she says of the 20th century American visionary, a cultural icon and civil rights activist for whom authenticity was crucial, meaning existed to be found and jazz music offered hope, promised freedom. “I wanted to get a sense of who he was so we could show how he moved through the world. I wanted us to connect with people as beautifully as he did.”
Daniels duly presented a thematic structure gleaned from her research to a 19-strong ensemble that features a string quartet, horn section, rhythm section and three singers (including herself). From this came the notion of ten movements, beginning in Renaissance-era Harlem, taking in Baldwin’s history with the church (the son of a Baptist minister, he was a teenage Pentecostal preacher), his eschewing of labels applied to sexuality, his life as a writer, and as an activist. His feelings of vulnerability and joy.
When Edwards came on board soon afterwards, comfort zones were pushed back further as music charts and conventional conducting – still largely standard tropes for NYJO – went out the window.
“There had been talk of working with existing Big Band repertoire,” says Edwards, variously lauded for his work as director of Nu Civilisation Orchestra and for leading his own trio (and indeed, for conducting Mississippi Goddam: A Celebration of Nina Simone, the Southbank x Montreux Jazz Festival’s opening concert). “But my thinking was we needed something more bespoke, visceral and experimental if we really wanted to reflect the attributes of James Baldwin and the music he was listening to.
“So, I told them about a technique called conduction, which is basically a form of music making where gestures, signs and symbols given by the director are interpreted by an ensemble in real time. It’s a method that goes back to the beginning of collective music making.”
Together, they played vamps, found motifs, and flow. They put together a soundtrack to the different elements of James Baldwin in a ground-up collective creation a la the ensembles of Mingus or Ellington, a structured improvisation pulsing with musicality and imbued with on-the-fly flair. Encouraged to contribute feedback, NYJO musicians – all aged between 18 and 25 – requested the inclusion of sectionals so that no instruments felt left out, so opportunities were afforded to strengthen their improvisatory skills, highlight their strengths.
“It was important to use all attributes of the ensemble,” Edwards says. “So, the strings normally feature more in each tune, for example. but there were times where it was good to challenge them, to encourage the culture of conduction. They got used to needing to be on their toes and ready to take it somewhere else.”
Titled for Baldwin’s eponymous 1963 non-fiction book – at once an evocation of his formative years and a searing indictment of racial injustice – NYJO’s The Fire Next Time! A Tribute to James Baldwin gradually evolved into a spirited paean to a life variously lived in Harlem and Paris, in the church, in truth, in power, defiance. A life strafed with struggle and beauty, retold through a prism of music, song and spoken word – including audio recordings of Baldwin’s pulpit-honed voice.
“You have to decide not to be that man, that monster,’ he declares, as charismatic and relevant as he ever was. “Freedom of choice. You go either way. Choose good, choose love.”
When The Fire Next Time! debuted last August at a packed Bold Tendencies, that fabulous rooftop arts space at Peckham Multi-Storey Car Park in South London, its uniqueness spoke to the strengths of its mode of creation. Joined by starry guests, tuba player Theon Cross and kit drummer/producer Moses Boyd, musicians in the vanguard of the British jazz renaissance, and with a warm summer breeze ruffling the hair of performers including pianist Pablo Barrios, trumpeter Olivia Cuttill and bassist Tay Harvey, the project did NYJO proud.
“It was a really great first performance,” says Vikki Maudave, “and just so exciting seeing something that came from musical conversations with Peter around the themes that Lucy-Anne had brought in.
“Their trust in Peter, in each other and in the creative process was remarkable,” she continues. “Having Lucy-Anne, who not so long ago was their peer, as the curator also really helped foster that. They were so enthusiastic about making music that reflected Baldwin’s social and political ethos and celebrated him as an activist as well as a writer, and they brought that energy into the project.”
Back, then, to a sold-out Purcell Room, where The Fire Next Time! is introduced by musicians/bandleaders Wayne ‘Ahnansé’ Francis and Olivia Murphy, two of NYJO’s four newly appointed Resident Musical Directors, all working with Maudave to shape the future of NYJO’s artistic programming. Having hailed the talents of vocalist Akin Soul, the evening’s opening act and with Daniels and Rhianna Frimpong, one of the ensemble’s three singers, Francis (founder of the southeast London jazz collective Steam Down) referenced the sixty-year history of NYJO while reinforcing the potential of music to clear the path in times of chaos and deliver messages urgent and timeless.
‘Going downtown to meet the man,‘ sang Akin Soul when the show began, a refrain that became incantatory as Daniels and Frimpong joined in and the show found its stride, the music coaxed from its loose musical structure by Edwards’s mime-like gestures and/or pointed baton. All gospel harmonies and synth-organ stylings, ‘The Pulpit’ came with Baldwin’s musings on his preacher father, the son of a slave; the sharp angles of ‘Wavering Belief’ soundtracked his fall-out with religion.
‘Sexuality’ had a charge that felt both propulsive and, as the musicians seemed to carve a space for thoughts to wander into, also meditative. ‘An American in Paris’ had brass-led cinematic flair; ‘Mirror Mirror’, the final movement, incorporated Baldwin’s cautionary ‘You have to decide, in your heart, not to be that monster’ in ways that held a looking glass up to modern society. To us.
The Fire Next Time! will change again when next it is performed. Such is the nature of improvisation, and the musicality of an ensemble that, pushed to go further, goes further still. But what remains steadfast is the essence of James Baldwin, one of the most important cultural and political figures of the 20th century, and the contemporary relevance of his message.
“As we move through all these soundscapes I invite you to open your ears, maybe close your eyes, and be immersed in and spoken to by this performance,” said Lucy-Anne Daniels.
“It’s time to meet the man.”
- Our tribute to James Baldwin is on tour! Find all currently announced dates on our What’s On page, and sign up to our newsletter below for future updates.