She Said National Youth Jazz Orchestra

• 1 Wild Oak 09:36
• 2 Struttin' With Some Barbecue 06:00
• 3 A Timeless Place 05:49
• 4 Willow Weep for Me 07:07
• 5 The Earth Keeps Spinnin' 07:05
• 6 Remind Me 04:44
• 7 Transition 08:13
• 8 Nurrquss 08:41
• 9 Celeste 07:24
• 10 You Do?! 08:02
• 11 God Bless the Child 06:56
• Total Runtime 01:19:37

Info for She Said

"She Said" is the culmination of a year-long programme at the National Youth Jazz Orchestra to remix the gender balance in jazz, the album features collaborations with leading artists including legendary vocalist Norma Winstone, trumpeter/composers Yazz Ahmed and Laura Jurd, pianist Nikki Iles and saxophonist Josephine Davies.

Through newly-commissioned music, live performance, research projects and support for emerging musicians, the project has expanded the number of works by female composers in NYJO's repertoire and championed female role models. Their intention was to feature artists whose distinctive voices can be transcribed into compositions for large ensemble and to reach into the history of women's contributions to jazz, shedding light on how the roots of this music nourish current innovation and creativity.

The project features four composers who have created a personal space in today's musical landscape, and whose musical spirit is fortified and enhanced, rather than diluted, by the big band setting. Laura Jurd, Issie Barratt, Nikki Iles and Yazz Ahmed were given an open brief: to compose freely, drawing on their imagination and particular circumstances. The resulting works are 'The Earth Keeps Spinning', 'You Do?!', 'Wild Oak' and 'Nurrquss'.

Around these new works, NYJO Artistic Director Mark Armstrong built a programme that provided musical contrast and a flavour of traditional big band music. Beginning with Lil Hardin in the 1920s, the programme emphasises the quality and relevance of female composers' output in the first decades of jazz. It also honours female arrangers and lyricists, featuring widely known jazz standards such as 'Willow Weep for Me' and the heart-stopping lyrics and delivery of Norma Winstone. It is a genuine tribute to NYJO's work and reputation that peerless guest artists such as Norma Winstone, Yazz Ahmed, Nikki Iles and Josephine Davies appear alongside our young musicians, performing their own compositions, and that Georgina Jackson and Shirley Smart bring such character to the tracks they feature on.

National Youth Jazz Orchestra
Mark Armstrong, direction

National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO)
is a glittering showcase for the UK’s finest young professional jazz musicians, combining a hard-swinging rhythm section and a raft of hugely talented soloists, to bring you the very best in British big-band jazz. Under the Artistic Direction of Mark Armstrong, the 23-piece orchestra perform around 40 concerts a year nationally and internationally, and aim to inspire the next generation of young jazz musicians with education work wherever they tour. Over its 53-year history, NYJO has helped launch the careers of many of the country’s most renowned jazz musicians including Guy Barker, Amy Winehouse, Mark Nightingale, Gwilym Simcock and Mercury Award Nominee Laura Jurd.

NYJO’s recent highlights include a highly acclaimed appearance at the BBC Proms in August 2018, and a collaborative concert tour in September 2018 to Germany and Holland with their German and Dutch national youth jazz orchestra equivalents BuJazzO and NJJO entitled Three Nations Under One Groove.

Mark Armstrong
was born in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne but brought up in Amersham where he attended Dr Challoner’s Grammar School. took a degree in Music at Oxford University and attended the postgraduate course in jazz and studio music at the Guildhall School of Music, gaining an LGSM in Jazz.

Mark’s playing career has included a wide variety of styles and genres. He was a member of Clark Tracey’s Quintet for seven years, recording two albums, The Calling (2003) and The Mighty Sas (2006) and played regularly with Clark’s father Stan Tracey, recording with Stan on his final quintet album The Flying Pig (2013) and with Stan’s big band live from the 2006 Appleby jazz festival as well as performing with the big band at the 2009 BBC Proms. Mark’s work as a sideman has also seen him playing Latin Jazz with Robin Jones’s Sextet, Mainstream and traditional jazz with the Pasadena Roof Orchestra and bebop with Peter Long’s Gillespiana in which the Times’s Alyn Shipton described his playing as “pirouetting through Gillespie’s breaks quicker than a hummingbird’s wings” and John Fordham of the Guardian described him as “the solo star of the outfit”. Mark was nominated in the best trumpet category of the 2007 Ronnie Scott Jazz Awards. Mark still performs regularly as a jazz trumpet player: as a member of the Ronnie Scott Jazz Orchestra and in his own quartet, which released the Album Coastbound in 2010.

Mark’s career as a conductor began at Oxford where he helped to resurrect the Oxford University Big Band. After joining the National Youth Jazz Orchestra he was asked by founding Music Director Bill Ashton to act as his assistant, a position he maintained for almost 15 years before being appointed as NYJO’s Artistic and Music Director in 2011. Since this appointment the orchestra has recorded its first studio album for many years, The Change, and appeared at the 2012 BBC Proms concerts: one of the few Proms to be televised that year, and the London Jazz Festival in 2012 and 2013.

Mark’s additional education work includes his position as Jazz Professor at the Royal College of Music, which combines academic lecturing and practical coaching and tuition, lecturing in composition at the London Centre of Contemporary Music, and teaching the trumpet at James Allen’s Girls’ School. Mark is also a jazz moderator and trainer, and both main panel and jazz examiner for the ABRSM.

Mark is a past winner of the BBC Big Band Competition arranging prize, and many of his big band compositions can be heard on recent NYJO albums. A recent commission, the Solstice Suite for big band was performed at the 2009 North Sea Jazz Festival. He writes a wide range of arrangements and compositions from choral music to symphony orchestra.

Mark lives in South East London with his wife, conductor Elinor Corp and children Rosie, Henry and Lucy.

This album contains no booklet.