Glasgow Jazz Festival
June 29th, 2009
I have just spent the weekend up in Glasgow as guest of the Jazz Festival for their Homewgrown Showcase of Scottish jazz musicians. I have been up a few times before, and worried about the attendances. But this time audiences were well up and I got the impression that this year’s stronger Scottish jazz focus somehow chimed in with the increasingly strong Scottish identity arising from devolution and all that, and drew the crowds. Part of the reason must also be the great venues they were using this year, all in the very attractive Merchant City part of Glasgow. The main large venue, apart from the Concert Hall, is the Old Fruitmarket which still has all the old signs up and a bit of a feel of a market, but makes a great venue.
I’m told that Scottish traditional music really developed in the late 90s at the time of devolution and many Scottish players seem to divide their time between jazz and traditional music. This often results in a very interesting and successful blend of the two styles. Trumpeter Colin Steele does this very effectively in a quintet that also features Dave Milligan on piano and Phil Bancroft on saxophones. But, for me, the most enjoyable gig of the weekend came from a sextet led by drummer Stu Brown who recreate the music of Raymond Scott. Raymond Scott led a sextet in New York in the 1930s that gained a certain popularity for very clever themes that weren’t reallly jazz, but drew on its harmonies and rhythms. These themes then became the music for cartoon films with the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and even, more recently, the Simpsons. Anyway the music is great fun and extremely well played by Stu Brown’s Raymond Scott Sextet. I hope we can get the group down to this part of the world sometime.
Tommy Smith was very much to the fore leading both the Scottish Youth Jazz Orchestra with lots of Birmingham Conservatoire students and graduates and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra playing Tommy’s rearrangement for jazz big band of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Brian Kellock as soloist on piano.
Other bands to look out for are the Paul Towndrow Quartet and the Ryan Quigley Big Band.
Tony

























