THOUSANDS OF MILES
"Her ripe delivery... has shades of Dietrich herself." The Times
"An artistic triumph." Europadisc
"Lindsey’s assimilation of the style sounds near effortless... her voice turning on a sixpence from Weimar drawl to a Lieder-singer’s poise and back again." The Guardian
"Goes far beyond a simple fusion of jazz and classical. Here, the whole is more than the sum of its parts." Crescendo
Click for video. Dir. Christian Beuchet
Photo © Richard Dumas / Alpha Classics
Photo © Richard Dumas / Alpha Classics
Closing the distance between classical music and Broadway, between the old and new worlds, between opera and jazz… Thousands of Miles is born out of an encounter between Kate Lindsey and jazz pianist Baptiste Trotignon.
For their debut joint album, they have produced a rich and varied programme around the songs of Kurt Weill, from Nanna’s Lied and Trouble Man, to classics from The Threepenny Opera and Lost in the Stars.
The journey through three European languages brings the listener to the very beginnings of jazz, and features new arrangements and deft improvisations by the award-winning Trotignon. They also pay homage to three composers who, like Weill, were forced to leave their homelands in Germany and Austria, emigrating to the ‘new world’ of the United States of America and taking their stories and styles with them: Alma Mahler, Zemlinsky and Korngold. The disparate group are united by a shared narrative, their songs all speaking of intense longing and homesickness. Several songs have rarely been recorded before.
Kate has thrilled audiences around the globe with her performances of Mozart and Purcell, but grew up steeped in the music of Broadway, from Gershwin to Cole Porter. “The works on Thousands of Miles all share a deep, complex search for a sense of belonging," she says. "A search for a collective spirit, for a physical and emotional home. In exploring this idea, Baptiste and I brought together our two very different musical worlds. It was a journey where we both had to open ourselves up and make ourselves vulnerable, myself as a classically-trained singer, and Baptiste, who has rhythm in his DNA. Together, I hope we developed a deep mutual understanding of each other's musical language and used it to enrich our own.”
Kate Lindsey joins Alpha Classics for several recordings over the coming years, with programmes created specifically to showcase her outstanding voice.
The debut joint album release in May 2017 will be followed by a concert tour over the coming seasons.