SNJO News - Peter & the Wolf narrated in Doric.

(Press release). The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra puts a local spin on its jazz adaptation of Peter and the Wolf for a special performance at Queen’s Cross Church, Aberdeen on Saturday 18th March.

Aberdeen-born actor and bothy ballad singer Joyce Falconer will narrate the tale, which has been translated into the north-east of Scotland's own language, Doric, as the orchestra’s award-winning musicians provide a theme for each character.

Originally devised by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev as a way of introducing children to the different instruments of the symphony orchestra, Peter and the Wolf was first performed in Moscow in 1936.

It has since received dozens of performances with narration by everyone from Sir John Gielgud and Sir Peter Ustinov to Sting and from Eleanor Roosevelt and Sophia Lauren to Dame Edna Everage. David Bowie and the Hungarian American conductor Eugene Ormandy took it into the US pop charts in 1978 and SNJO director, saxophonist Tommy Smith adapted Prokofiev’s piece for jazz orchestra in 2018.

“We initially performed and recorded it with the Leith-born actor Tam Dean Burn narrating a text in Scots by the former National Poet of Scotland, Liz Lochhead,” says Tommy Smith. “However, Scottish voices had delivered the original text before as both Sir Sean Connery and David Tennant have narrated it.”

The live premiere of the Scots version earned five-star reviews, as did the subsequent album, and the orchestra later performed the Scots version, instead of the English version, as per Liz Lochhead's wishes, in the USA. They have also taken it to Japan, with acclaimed actor Isao Hashizume narrating in Japanese, and to Norway, where actor Jacob Andersen delivered the narrative in Norwegian.

For the Queen’s Cross Church performance, which will be part of the SNJO’s two-day residency at Aberdeen Jazz Festival, Smith decided to call on Joyce Falconer, who has appeared on stage and in television dramas including Taggart and River City.

“It felt right to be honouring the local language, rather than delivering the piece in Scots or English,” says Smith. “Doric is a wonderfully idiosyncratic and descriptive language and as it now has official language status, having Joyce narrating will give the performance a sense of authenticity. We hope local children will bring their parents along and enjoy a real Aberdeenshire story with a jazz soundtrack.”