Pop Cantatas

Michael Hurd was a pioneer in composing brief, witty and, above all, performable choral music for children to enjoy. When Jonah-Man Jazz arrived in 1966, young singers and their teachers had modern-sounding music to make and share. Pastiche jazz, blues and rock 'n' roll rhythms, memorable tunes and entertaining lyrics proved a winning combination, as they also do in Swingin' Samson, Rooster Rag, Prodigal and Captain Coram's Kids. This recording is the first to be supported by the British Music Society Charitable Trust Michael Hurd Bequest, established to further the appreciation of the composer's output.

"The works on this Naxos disc are lightly jazzy and must have turned generations of children on to concert music. They make confident and fearless communion with West End show-time, dance-band drum-kit and light Radio 2 style middle-of-the-road idioms. Jonah-Man Jazz is irresistibly swung, concise and just sentimental enough to snag its barb on the emotional apparatus. The unison children's voices, whether in choral or more rarely in solo participation, have impudence and the aplomb to tease out the tension between occasionally grown-up emotions and young minds. They're all a delight to hear and very much in the same line as the Horovitz and Flanders Captain Noah and his Floating Zoo though that post-dates by four or five years the first Hurd work. They all, in any event, make a very pleasing effect"
(MusicWeb April 2011)