Friday Night Is Music Night offers Chichester New Year celebration

A “night of elegance, emotion and entertainment” is the promise with “orchestral gems and songs, featuring familiar favourites and delightful discoveries” under conductor Jérôme Kuhn and with soprano Alison Scherzer.

Jérôme takes up the position of associate conductor with the orchestra at the start of January and then two weeks later delivers his first Friday Night Is Music Night.

“I have been working with the orchestra this past season and we recorded three different pieces together last year. The orchestra is very versatile. It does everything and Friday Night Is Music Night is the proof of that. The programme very much differs from one evening to another, and their strength as musicians is the fact that they are able to play everything. They can play the classical tunes and the popular tunes and they're able to switch the way they play every time they change their style. And that's what makes the whole thing very appealing to me. I am very much the same. I don't just do one thing. I am wanting to do a bit of everything. And so it was love at first sight with the orchestra. Finding an orchestra that's got the same kind of thinking that I have and that's got the same lifestyle in terms of musical repertoire was just great.

“When we talk to venues and sometimes with newspapers they all want to know what is the thing that we do that is our speciality, and for me it has always been about being disparate. I don't want to be put in a box and I think it's the same with the BBC Concert Orchestra. They do so many different projects and programmes. You think what is the label with the orchestra, what is the thing, and I think the thing with the orchestra is their versatility.”

As for the Chichester programme: “We will be following a similar pattern with lots of different stuff. The producer came to me and said what did I want to play and I thought as it would be January, we would still be allowed to celebrate the New Year so I thought let's have something that was a bit festive. We start our programme with something I called Cheers.”

Jérôme is delighted to be joined by soprano Alison Scherzer: “She is an American who now lives in Germany and I have worked with her a lot. We did mainly contemporary repertoire together, and the thing that I love about her is that she knows no limits in terms of her accuracy, and she has no fear. Sometimes when you're doing very complicated pieces you almost need to have two brains in order to understand how they work but she is very agile. She does them in a very easy way and with a very accurate voice. We will be performing a few pieces from the American repertoire together.”