Jennifer Johnston - A Love Letter to Liverpool (2019)

Wherever I travel in the world and people discover that I am from Liverpool, I am congratulated for our two Premiership football teams, the Beatles and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, yet it is far more than the sum of its parts. Liverpool is a city with a fiercely independent spirit and a rich and dramatic cultural history matching its turbulent development, from a busy thriving port city, to a target for the bombs of the Luftwaffe in World War Two, to a place abandoned to its fate by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, to a city mourning its 96 dead and fighting for justice after Hillsborough. 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, including one of its housing projects winning the coveted Turner Prize, although the Bombed Out Church remains as a physical testament to its colourful past. Its beauty has always been as much in its people as in its buildings, but it has now become a real destination, packed with museums and galleries second only to London, and is blessed with the Three Graces and the Royal Albert Dock on a riverfront that is an instantly recognisable, UNESCO-protected sight. The city also has a thriving film industry and continues to serve as a backdrop for major Hollywood movies like Fantastic Beasts, Captain America and Tolkien. Gone are the days where one of the few places ‘in town’ to have a cheese scone and a cup of tea was the British Home Stores cafe, and it is now brimming with restaurants and bars which draw a fashionable crowd. Its most famous club, The Cavern, still attracts thousands of visitors a year, many of them Beatlemaniacs imagining themselves back in the 1960s during the Merseybeat heyday, when the Fab Four and Cilla Black were on the playbill, on their way to international stardom. Music plays a central role in a city designated a UNESCO City of Music, blessed not only with outstanding venues but also with a multicultural and cultured population, who will attend anything from a rave at Liverpool Cathedral to a performance of a Shostakovich symphony at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall. The world-renowned Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is the second oldest in the country and remains the only UK orchestra to own its own hall. And what a hall it is, spectacular in its Art Deco Grade II* listed glory, complete with giant naked muses in the plasterwork. It is a huge honour for any performer, let alone a Scouser, to be granted the opportunity to be Artist in Residence with the Liverpool Phil, and it has afforded me the chance to celebrate the music of my home city and the city itself. The sea has played a significant role in my family’s history, and in the history of Liverpool, for generations and so is a strong thread running through the songs on this album. Although I was born in Fazakerley (now Aintree) Hospital, I grew up in Crosby, my childhood home overlooking the Mersey Estuary and Antony Gormley’s Another Place. Like many Scousers, my forbears were dockworkers – my great-great-grandfather was Head Sailmaker for the White Star Line, the company which owned the Titanic. As a major port, Liverpool has always been a city of migration, a hub for people journeying to and from the New World, including sailors, the Windrush generation, those fleeing hardship and wanting to find a better life, and, at the other end of the spectrum, those in slavery. Scousers have never been proud of the city’s role in transporting slaves to the Americas, and Liverpool became a focus for demonstrations by anti-slavery campaigners, including John Newton, the city’s Tide Surveyor, who wrote Amazing Grace. The wonderful Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Company choir appear with me on this album singing that very famous piece, in a brand-new arrangement. The youth of our city will be the beneficiaries of any profits from this album, via two world-class organisations: Alder Hey Children’s Charity supports the work of one of the world’s leading specialist children’s hospitals, and the Liverpool Phil’s outstanding Youth Company encourages the development of the next generation of young musicians and composers from across Merseyside. I am especially proud that this album contains the works of seven of the Liverpool Phil’s young composers, all of whom are at the beginning of their careers. I joined the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir at the tender age of 15, and so I’ve come full circle, back to where I started a quarter of a century ago. What a journey it has been. 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.

Tracklist:
01. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - In My Liverpool Home
02. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - Amazing Grace
03. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - My Native Land
04. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - Homeward Bound
05. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - Song to the Seals
06. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - I Saw Three Ships
07. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - Sea Fever
08. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - The Estuary
09. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - The Gateway to the Atlantic
10. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - Liverpool Lullaby
11. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - Johnny Todd
12. Jennifer Johnston, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Choir, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra & Ian Tracey - What Will They Tell Me Tonight?