Young jazz musicians gear up for new season
Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra (photo by Derek Clark)
The Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra begins a new year with a fresh group of young musicians playing concerts in Linlithgow, Glasgow, Birnam and Cumbernauld.
St Margaret's Hall in Linlithgow on Saturday 2nd November, Cottiers in Glasgow on Sunday 3rd November, Birnam Arts on Saturday 18th January and Cumbernauld on Sunday 19th January are the venues where the concerts will take place.
Founded in 2002 to provide a free educational opportunity for promising young jazz players, the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra has gone on to nurture some of the biggest talents in Scottish jazz today.
“I wanted to give young musicians the chance to play orchestral jazz as a way of developing the skills necessary to play jazz in any environment,” says Smith, whose own saxophone talents are recognised around the world.
In a big band, Smith says, there’s a camaraderie where the musicians encourage each other to improvise and take chances.
“Standing up to play your first solo can be quite daunting,” says Smith. “But if you don’t do it, you’re never going to play jazz and we try to create a situation where the musicians can relax and feel good about themselves and what they play. Then they can go on to work on ideas and progress.”
With three albums released to enthusiastic media responses internationally, the orchestra has a body of work and a history of performances that set a standard for new arrivals to work towards.
“Seeing previous members going on to win awards and create an impression around the world with their recording careers can be a real fillip for the musicians who follow in their footsteps,” says Smith. “The youth orchestra can also be a stepping stone to the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. We play the same music, the same arrangements, as the SNJO so it’s good preparation for anyone making the step up.”
The concerts will feature big-band music by Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Astor Piazzolla, Jaco Pastorius, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington. There will also be a chance to hear the orchestra’s promising singer, Laura Oghagbon, who has already made a strong impression on audiences.
Concerts begin at 2pm with the exception of Linlithgow, which begins at 7:30pm.
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.”
