Chineke! Brings Forgotten Black Composer Edmund Thornton Jenkins to the Proms

The Chineke! Orchestra, under the baton of Jonathon Heyward, presented the long-delayed premiere of *Ballet* by Edmund Thornton Jenkins at the Royal Albert Hall’s Proms season. The work, composed in 1918 while Jenkins was a student at the Royal Academy of Music, was performed from a reconstructed manuscript assembled by his great-nephew, Tuffus Zimbabwe. The program also featured soprano Angel Blue, a showcase of the orchestra’s brass section, and a selection of additional works ranging from Barber’s *Knoxville: Summer of 1915* to Dvorák’s Symphony No 8.

The Guardian

Chineke! — a UK-based ensemble dedicated to uncovering and performing music by Black composers — has made the revival of Jenkins’s ballet a focal point of its ongoing mission to broaden the early-20th-century repertoire. Jenkins, born in Charleston, South Carolina, died in Paris at 32 after gaining recognition as a composer and band leader. His original manuscript survived only in fragments, prompting Zimbabwe to piece together the missing sections for this performance.

The Guardian

The opening Processional was described as “substantial,” moving from an ominous tone to a lighter texture. The second movement opened with a bubbling flute duet and a florid viola solo, illustrating Jenkins’s skill in intertwining melody and counter-melody. The finale, dominated by a waltz, was noted as comparatively slender beside the preceding trumpet fanfare, though it concluded with an exuberant, uptempo ending. Angel Blue’s rendition of Barber’s *Knoxville* captured the nostalgic atmosphere of James Agee’s poetry, while her later foray into four Great American Songbook standards was characterized as charming yet uneven, with Richard Kelley’s trumpet solo standing out. The orchestra’s brass section received particular praise for its versatility throughout Dvorák’s Symphony No 8.

The Guardian

The review highlighted the concert’s momentum, crediting Heyward’s direction for “electric tempos” and a “breathless” finale. It lamented the omission of a Margaret Bonds song from the programme and suggested that the waltz in the finale sounded “slender and staid” compared with the earlier trumpet fanfare. Overall, the performance was portrayed as a significant step toward recognizing Jenkins’s contribution to early 20th-century music, despite minor artistic shortcomings.

The Guardian