A Love Letter to Liverpool Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey

• The Spinners:
• 1In My Liverpool Home05:18
• Anon:
• 2Amazing Grace03:01
• Charles Ives: (1874 - 1954):
• 3My Native Land01:27
• Traditional:
• 4Homeward Bound04:28
• Granville Bantock (1868 - 1946):
• 5Song to the Seals03:59
• Traditional:
• 6I Saw Three Ships02:56
• John Ireland (1879 - 1962):
• 7Sea Fever02:20
• Michael Head (b. 1961):
• 8The Estuary04:08
• Richard Miller:
• 9The Gateway to the Atlantic05:09
• Traditional:
• 10Liverpool Lullaby07:04
• 11Johnny Todd01:50
• Mark Simpson (b. 1988):
• 12What Will They Tell Me Tonight?04:17
• Stephen Hough (b. 1961):
• 13Madam and her Madam00:59
• 14The World You're Coming Into02:17
• 15Blackbird02:45
• Merwyn Shanning:
• 16A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square02:46
• Traditional:
• 17Danny Boy02:57
• Thomas More:
• 18The Last Rose of Summer03:57
• Traditional:
• 19The Leaving of Liverpool04:44
• Stevie Jackson (b. 1969):
• 20All Our Different Voices04:25
• 21You'll Never Walk Alone (Live)03:56
• Total Runtime01:14:43

Info for A Love Letter to Liverpool

Liverpool is a city with a fiercely independent spirit and a rich and dramatic cultural history matching its turbulent development. The past 30 years have witnessed Liverpool’s renaissance, and, thanks to pure Scouse grit, it has reinvented itself as a city of innovation and entrepreneurialism and seen staggering levels of regeneration. Jennifer Johnston’s new album is an affectionate celebration to her native city.

One of the world’s most sought after and in demand mezzo sopranos, Jennifer’s career takes her to the world’s greatest opera houses working with some of the greatest conductors and singers or our time. Her new album is a deeply personal and affectional musical love-letter to her native Liverpool. Johnston: I have sung across the globe and experienced many wonderful places, yet I love nowhere more than Liverpool: the gateway to the Atlantic, my native land, my beloved city, my home.

"Johnston’s eclectic tribute to her native city integrates traditional, popular and classical into a seamless musical panorama, exquisitely sung throughout. A beauty." (Sunday Times)

"This is a fierce, big-hearted and atmospheric tribute to Johnston’s home city, celebrated in rewardingly unsoupy arrangements of popular romantic, traditional and Beatles songs – Johnston handles them all with rich colours, elegance and feeling." (The Observer)

Jennifer Johnston, mezzo-soprano
Alisdair Hogarth, piano
Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir
Armand Rabot, conductor

Jennifer Johnston
is a former BBC New Generation Artist, and a graduate of Cambridge University and the Royal College of Music. She is particularly associated with the Bayerische Staatsoper and its distinguished musical director Kirill Petrenko, where her roles have included Second Norn, Roßweise, Floßhilde, Hedwige and La Ciesca. She has appeared in opera at the Teatro alla Scala (Mrs Grose/The Turn of the Screw, Gaia/CO2), Salzburg Festival (Carmi/La Betulia Liberata, Lady de Hautdesert/Gawain, Leda/Die Liebe Der Danae) and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (Dido/Dido and Aeneas), amongst others.

A prolific concert performer, she has performed with many of the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors, including Jocaste in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (Sir John Eliot Gardiner/Berlin Philharmonic & London Symphony Orchestras, released as an LSO Live disc), Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (Sir John Eliot Gardiner/Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique at the BBC Proms, Carnegie Hall and on disc), Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (Welser-Möst/Cleveland and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestras, Sir John Eliot Gardiner/Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique), Waltraute in Wagner’s Die Walküre (Sir Simon Rattle/Bayerische Rundfunks Symphony Orchestra and on disc), Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder (Kalmar/Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Brabbins/BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Dausgaard/BBC National Orchestra Of Wales), Mahler’s Second Symphony (Zinman/Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Lintu/Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, De la Parra/London Philharmonic Orchestra), Mahler’s Third Symphony (Welser-Möst/Cleveland Orchestra, Zinman/Orchestre National de Lyon), Mahler’s Eighth Symphony (Welser-Möst/Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra), Mahler’s Rückert Lieder (Zinman/Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Kalmar/Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Sondergard/Royal Scottish National Orchestra), Mahler’s Das Lied Von Der Erde (Marin/Hamburg Symphony Orchestra), Elgar’s Sea Pictures (Sir Jeffrey Tate/Hamburg Symphony Orchestra), Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius (Brabbins/BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Hill/Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra), Verdi’s Requiem (Gardner/Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Slatkin/Orchestra National de Lyon), Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri (Gatti/Accademia Di Santa Cecilia), Schumann’s Faustszenen (Harding/Gewandhausorchester and Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Schonwandt/Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra), Adès’s Totentanz (Adès/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Harding/Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra), and Pasqualita in Adams’ Doctor Atomic (Adams/BBC Symphony Orchestra, recorded for Nonesuch).

She made her solo recital debut at the Wigmore Hall accompanied by Joseph Middleton and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. She is a founder member of The Prince Consort, with whom she has recorded for Linn Records, and has appeared in recital at Wigmore Hall, the Concertgebouw and the Aldeburgh Festival. Her extensive discography includes Anthony Payne’s arrangement of Vaughan Williams’ Four Last Songs with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins for Albion Records, which she premiered at the BBC Proms (Vänska/BBCSO) and which was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Jennifer’s engagements in Season 2019-20 include Brigitta in a new production of Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt, and Hedwige in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, both at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Baba the Turk in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at the Glyndebourne Festival, Auntie in Britten’s Peter Grimes at Oper Frankfurt, Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass at the First Night of the Proms (Kanellakis/BBC Symphony Orchestra), Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (Welser-Möst/Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Stutzmann/Bamberg Symphony Orchestra), Mahler’s Das Lied Von Der Erde (Long Yu/Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Treviño/Basque National Orchestra on tour), Mahler’s Second Symphony (Hrůša/Philharmonia Orchestra), Mahler’s Third Symphony (Treviño/RTE Symphony Orchestra), Mahler’s Eight Symphony (K. Petrenko/Bayerische Staatsorchester), Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (Treviño/Malmö Symphony Orchestra), Verdi’s Requiem (Farnes/BBC National Orchestra Of Wales), Beethoven’s Opferlied (Gernon/BBC Philharmonic Orchestra) and Elgar’s Sea Pictures (Hill/Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra). She will be Artist in Residence at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, for whom she will sing Mahler’s Second and Third Symphonies (V. Petrenko), Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (Stutzmann), Messiah (Jeannin), and a recital with Joseph Middleton at St George’s Hall. Her debut solo disc, A Love Letter To Liverpool, will be released in September 2019 by Rubicon Classics.

Booklet for A Love Letter to Liverpool