This release by clarinetist
Emma Johnson takes its title from
Alec Templeton's Bach Goes to Town, an enjoyable work, but one slightly to the side of the idea the program represents. That idea is one that seems to make perfect sense, but was derailed by the modernist diktat and has only rarely been realized: the expansion of the vernacular repertory of the turn of the 19th to the 20th century to include jazz. Thus
Johnson and her collaborators, pianist
John Lenehan and percussionist
Paul Clarvis, with the
Carducci String Quartet on a few tracks, join the likes of
Vittorio Monti's Czárdas with
Gershwin,
Scott Joplin, and
Sidney Bechet (and even the St. James Infirmary Blues) on one hand, and the popular (and in
Debussy's case, even jazzier) side of
Dvorák,
Brahms, and
Ravel on the other. Sample the
Monti for an idea of what fun this sometimes café-based music can be, and you'll be thankful that
Johnson has played a role in bringing it back.
Johnson has a feel for how natural it is to combine this music with jazz, and for the jazz pieces themselves, where the clarinet is, of course, right at home. The album also reproduces a bit of the rhythmic discomfort English musicians sometimes felt with jazz back in the 1920s, but in general this is a highly enjoyable program of light music that will delight listeners who hear it at holiday gatherings and those beyond.