Journey to Jinja

Concert Piece for Recorder Quartet and Recorder Orchestra.

Score and 15 Parts

Instrumentation:
Recorder Quartet: SATB
Recorder Orchestra: SnoSSAATTBBGK

Jinja is a quite idyllic village on the white Nile. I travelled there on January 23rd: it took about two hours from the airport in Entebbe. An endless, dusty street in the midst of all the green. Churchill called Uganda the Pearl of Africa, which they quote proudly all the time, and indeed everything grows here: tea, coffee, cacao, mangos, vanilla, bananas, pineapple, guave, coconuts. On the streets you see all kinds of vehicles that seem to be from the time of my birth, loaded with goods, that stand over for several metres on both sides. The piece is about this chilled-out way of driving down the road in this old mini van and looking at all the huts & houses, shops, construction sites, ruins and big, colourful advertisements at the sides of the street which are typical for Black Africa. Children, animals and adults hang out in the shade. When there are so many holes in the street, everything is slower. My driver Ben stopped in-between to buy a pair of sneakers from a 14-year-old boy selling them on the street. They had a heavy argument about the price which he negotiated down from 60.000 UGS to 25.000. He put them on and threw the old pair away, out of the window, with the comment, he would only need one pair at a time. Later in the piece you hear the cars honk and beep, which the drivers do all the time, not as a moral comment, as in Germany, but as an announcement like: I AM COMING! YIPPEE! The landscape gives you a feeling of wideness. Two times we pass a church service where people are singing and praying out loud and very expressive (the orchestra may play that in a very free tempo). Uganda is a very Christian country where people are used to holding very ecstatic services for hours. In the end we come to the White Nile, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I wish to thank the Landesjugendblockflötenorchester Baden-Württemberg and the National Youth Recorder Orchestras (UK) for commissioning this piece.

The recording you can listen to here is the Live Recording of the Premiere on the 6th of August 2016 in Weil der Stadt. The National Youth Recorder Orchestra of Great Britain and the Landesjugendblockflötenorchester Baden-Württemberg play together under the conduct of Daniela Schüler. Thank you all very much!!!