We were treated to an extraordinarily exciting evening of music on March 24, with the Farnham Maltings packed out for the Waverley Singers’ concert featuring the Will Todd Jazz Ensemble.

The concert marked 15 years of Richard Pearce’s tenure as conductor of the Waverley Singers and he put together a masterly programme, harnessing the wonderful talents of Will Todd, as composer and performer, his terrific ensemble, the marvellous soprano Joanna Forbes L’Estrange and, of course, the Waverley Singers and their conductor himself.

It started with Chilcott’s Little Jazz Mass, which was well performed and was a worthy appetiser, but one that was completely blown away by what followed, starting with a quite dazzling set of jazz pieces, two of them hymns, no less, as Will and company showed us round the jazz world.

Will Todd takes to the stage at the Farnham Maltings
Will Todd takes to the stage at the Farnham Maltings (Waverley Singers)

But surely they couldn’t have turned a 4/4 piece into a 5/4 piece - just like that, without any rehearsal, including solos from each of these virtuoso jazzmen, into a star number which had us all foot-tapping embarrassingly up and down the hall? Seems they did. Will says he started out on the piano playing just by ear, and it shows. He’s also come a long way since then.

But if the jazz ensemble blew the Chilcott away, the Mass In Blue blew away everything else. Will Todd’s masterpiece isn’t just the words of the mass thrown into the blues genre: it’s a piece of enormous depth, range and feeling. Is there any other mass which puts such solemnity into Crucifixus Etiam Pro Nobis, then leaps so joyfully into Et Resurrexit? Or which has the rhythmic chanted pleading of Agnus Dei over and over, and ends with the triumphant shout of Credo?

Soprano Joanna Forbes L’Estrange performs alongside the Will Todd Jazz Ensemble
Soprano Joanna Forbes L’Estrange performs alongside the Will Todd Jazz Ensemble (Waverley Singers)

All the performers rose to this great occasion. Of the ensemble, enough said. Joanna Forbes L’Estrange’s soprano soared and swooped over and through the choir, giving us true blues, in a way which Bessie Smith herself would have loved - from an octave or so lower! How does she hold on to such purity of sound with all that emotive force?

And then there was the choir. The Waverleys sang with tremendous precision, commitment and energy, with a wonderfully rich sound. Richard Pearce had succeeded in extending their comfort zone into a completely new genre, and they sang as if they had been doing it all their lives.

This concert was a triumph!

John Broom