Pianist Zoe Rahman opens new Edinburgh concert series
Zoe Rahman (photo by Ilse Kitshoff)
The award-winning pianist Zoe Rahman headlines the first in a series of concerts curated by saxophonist Helena Kay at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh on Thursday 19th September.
Chichester-born Rahman, who won the Ivor Novello Impact Award in 2021 and the MOBO Award for Best Jazz Act in 2012, has become a much-respected figure on the UK and European jazz scenes. Her powerful performances marry her classical training with studies in jazz with the revered JoAnne Brackeen at Berklee College of Music in Boston and her strong engagement with her Bengali heritage.
Rahman will play solo piano before being joined in a series of duets with Kay in a concert that will be opened by the Glasgow-based Ghanaian guitarist Nathan Somevi’s trio.
For Kay, who has included a number of “inspirational” musicians including saxophonists Laura Macdonald and Tommy Smith and violinist Seonaid Aitken in the concert series, sharing the Queen’s Hall stage with Zoe Rahman is exciting for two reasons.
The two women have worked together before, when Kay joined the octet that recorded Rahman’s 2023 album, Colour of Sound. Having first met Rahman as a teenager, however, Kay says that the sixteen-year-old Helena wouldn't believe this turn of events.
“My mum is also a big fan of Zoe’s and she made sure we both went to meet Zoe after a concert she played with Courtney Pine,” says Kay. “It was so inspiring for me to meet Zoe at that stage in my musical life.”
The Queen’s Hall is also a source of inspiration for Kay.
“I’ve played there quite a few times with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and I’m always aware that I’m following in illustrious footsteps,” says the saxophonist. “The brilliant composer and pianist Carla Bley and saxophone legend Sonny Rollins are just two of the people I admire who have appeared in the venue. So to play there with some of my heroes is really special.”
Kay first came to public notice in winning the Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the Year title in 2015. The Peter Whittingham Jazz Prize followed the year after that and having graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, Kay went on to become a City Music Foundation Artist and won the Drake YolanDa Award in 2023.
The concert on 19th September is the first of five due to take place over the coming year under the Jazz Thursdays banner and Rahman and Kay have rehearsed in preparation for their debut as a duo.
“Zoe is such a brilliant duo partner,” says Kay. “It’s almost like playing in her octet. She puts so much energy and passion into her playing and her flow of ideas is amazing. It really makes you want to play.”
Duo with Jim Hall leads Livia's latest Louis Stewart releases
Louis Stewart with Jim Hall (photo by Gerald Davis)
A previously unreleased live guitar duo recording with Jim Hall leads Dublin-based Livia Records’ latest set of albums featuring Irish virtuoso, Louis Stewart.
The Dublin Concert was recorded in 1982 after Hall got in touch with Stewart to say he was in Ireland on holiday and asked if they could play a gig. The recording lay in the Livia vaults until two years ago, when Dermot Rogers, a Dublin radio presenter and Stewart devotee, acquired permission to reactivate the label. Livia had been founded in 1977 specifically to release Stewart’s recordings and had been inactive since the death of its founder, Gerald Davis, in 2005.
Rogers has overseen three releases since relaunching Livia – Stewart’s debut as a leader, Louis the First, the solo album Out on His Own and a hitherto unknown duo album by Stewart and pianist Noel Kelehan, Some Other Blues.
Now a further three albums, beginning with The Dublin Concert, are set for release this autumn. The Dublin Concert is released on 6th September and will be followed in October by the long unavailable duo album by Stewart and fellow guitarist Martin Taylor. A third album, the reissue of Spondance, which Stewart and pianist Jim Doherty recorded in Los Angeles with a band of top session musicians, follows in November.
“The concert that Louis and Jim Hall played in Dublin on Boxing Night 1982 has passed into Irish jazz folklore,” says Rogers. “Finding a venue at short notice at that time of year back then was no small feat but the Maccabi Hall turned out to be available, the tickets quickly sold out and Gerald Davis had the prescience to record the gig. You can sense the excitement in the room at the prospect of hearing the local hero, who had already made an impression internationally, with ‘the master of modern jazz guitar,’ as Pat Metheny described Jim Hall.”
Hall and Stewart had met in New York the year before when Stewart, who had been pronounced world class by the King of Swing, Benny Goodman, pianist George Shearing and saxophonist Ronnie Scott, played a week at Bechet’s – a visit that the New York Times’ respected jazz critic, John S. Wilson announced enthusiastically.
“They clearly formed a mutual admiration society because they’re obviously at ease with each other on the recording,” says Rogers. “The Dublin Concert is the only known recording of them performing together, though, so it’s a piece of jazz guitar history.”
Stewart had already played with Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, Bill Evans, Blossom Dearie and Tubby Hayes, among others, and he would go on to deputise for one of his early heroes, Barney Kessel – at Kessel’s suggestion – on a Great Guitars tour with Charlie Byrd. He also recorded an album, I Thought About You, with pianist John Taylor, bassist Sam Jones and drummer Billy Higgins that Rogers has plans to reissue.
“Before that, we have the album with Martin Taylor, which is effervescent, to say the least, and Spondance, which was originally intended as a jazz ballet, which Jim Doherty composed,” says Rogers. “The trumpeter Bobby Shew put the band together – an octet including Louis and Jim - and it’s quite different from the solo, duo and trio recordings we’ve issued so far.”
Low whistle master releases his most daring recording to date
Fraser Fifield (photo by Douglas Robertson)
Low whistle virtuoso Fraser Fifield releases Second Sight, the third in a trilogy of albums supported by Creative Scotland, on Friday August X.
As with the previous two albums in the series, Second Sight finds Fifield working in a trio, with guitarist Graeme Stephen and bassist Elie Afif this time inspiring Fifield to new levels of virtuosic, improvised creativity and adventure that showcase the low whistle as an instrument capable of great expression.
While Fifield and Stephen have enjoyed a long musical partnership – they played their first, impromptu gig together as last-minute stand-ins for a radio broadcast from Aberdeen in 1996 – this was Fifield's first meeting with Beirut-born Afif.
“Elie is equally proficient on acoustic and electric basses but I had a trio of whistle, guitar and bass guitar in mind,” says Fifield. “I thought that would work best for the music I’d written and it was clear as soon as Elie began to play, from his ability to articulate intricate lines with feeling while gelling with Graeme and myself, that he’s a terrific player.”
With one exception, Lolanders, the music on Second Sight was written specially for the recording session. Lolanders dates from the successful Dutch-Scottish project of the same name that featured Fifield and Stephen with three top musicians from the Netherlands and Indo-Scottish tabla master Sodhi Deerhe. Its knotty, sinuous lines reveal the trio as a satisfyingly tight unit.
"Most of the tunes are quite simple," says Fifield. "I wanted to leave lots of space for all three of us to interact and knowing Graeme's capabilities particularly, I was sure he would respond to a freer approach. He's such a creative player and he and Elie really entered into the spirit of the session. On No Distance, for example, I'd written the melody you hear at the end and we improvised our way towards it, quite successfully, I think."
In keeping with Fifield's liking for capturing the music in the moment, the album was recorded in one day. Stylistically it's another departure, Fifield's aim with all three trio albums being to take the low whistle out of its familiar territory.
"It's somewhere between the desert blues of Tinariwen, especially with Graeme bringing a grungy edge to his playing, and a step or two beyond the Scottish tradition," says Fifield. "The whole point of this trilogy was to be exploratory and see where the music goes through being open to other styles and influences."
