Reviews

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Hey Tommy,

    Thanks for sending me the project with the Scottish Natl Jazz Orch.
Terrific man! I feel truly honored. The arrangements are really beautiful.
My compliments to you and all the musicians.

Chick Corea

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SNJO plays Gershwin
KENNY MATHIESON

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QUEEN'S HALL, EDINBURGH

TOMMY Smith is not one to do things by half measures. When the director of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra decided to tackle an arrangement for jazz orchestra of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue for the opening night of the Edinburgh Jazz Festival, he was never going to be content with just touching up the original.
Gershwin's sub-20-minute classic for piano and orchestra, originally written for Paul Whiteman in 1924, expanded to well over double that length in Smith's arrangement, with Brian Kellock as soloist. Admittedly, much of the extra length was taken up by solos for most of the band, but the new ensemble writing was substantial in both extent and content.
The idea emerged when Smith noticed the pianist quoting melodies from Gershwin's original during their duo concerts. It turned out Kellock had played the piece as a student over 20 years ago.
Smith's declared aim was to retain as much as possible of the original classical solo piano part in the context of a jazz orchestral work.
The first surprise was the disappearance of the signature opening clarinet glissando. Smith's alternative introduction paid homage to Ellington and Basie, but the missing clarinet phrase did emerge later, played by Martin Kershaw against nicely harmonised saxophones, then echoed on muted trombones.
It was one among many deft touches in the ensemble writing, which ultimately recast Gershwin's piece in a clearly related but notably different guise. Kellock played the written solo part with distinction, adopting a freer rhythmic feel than most classical pianists achieve in this piece, and interpolated some improvised sections along the way.
Despite the stifling heat in an almost sold-out Queen's Hall, this was compelling stuff, and fully justified the decision to make it the Festival's main opening-night feature.
The first half drew on more familiar material from the SNJO's previous programmes of music by Count Basie, opening with their usual finale, April in Paris, and taking in a rumbustious Moten Swing and a fiery Jumping at the Woodside along the way.
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Hi,
The whole evening at the Queens Hall on Friday was great, if just a little hot.
The arrangement and performance of  RHAPSODY IN BLUE was quite fantastic  -  the arrangement had what few others achieve, whatever the subject  -  the witticisms and contextual references interwoven so well the whole work was entertaining, illuminating, instructive and thought-provoking.  The performance by each and everyone did it all justice. Wonderful.
Thank you so much.
Brenda and Alan King
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Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, Queen’s Hall

ROB ADAMS

Ever since the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra paid tribute to his music, there has been a suspicion that, on occasions, the great Charles Mingus is hovering over them like a patron saint. 
Their collaboration with West Country pianist Keith Tippett was one such instance. This latest adventure, involving director Tommy Smith's adaptation of George Gershwin's classic Rhapsody in Blue, was another.
In stretching Gershwin's piece to three times its original length, Smith not only invoked Mingus's full-blooded, rampaging spirit. He also created a setting with many subtle passages and one that paid due deference to such iconic Rhapsody in Blue features as its nostalgic refrain and the clarinet glissando, here played brilliantly by Martin Kershaw and echoed by the trombones, while taking the music into the modern era. The clarinet may not have made its entrance where expected, but as Smith said, this was a jazz arrangement, and jazz has a licence to move on. 
Smith also moved the piece into different areas. Whereas the original draws on Jewish traditions, this version went into the Latin Quarter and had fun with various jazz styles, including a classic jazz-era duet with featured pianist Brian Kellock and trumpeter Tom McNiven, and a guest appearance by I Got Rhythm. 
All of which allowed Kellock to show the full range of his talents. He played the classical parts with springy intelligence and, although he shared the solo spotlight more than might have been expected, his adaptability and quick-thinking musicality again confirmed him as a player who can command the world stage. 
The same might be said of SNJO and this piece might just be their ticket there.

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Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

ROB ADAMSNovember 27 2006

There can be a fine line in jazz tributes between mounting a nostalgic exercise and making the music live and say something to today's audience. The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra pursue the latter course with remarkable consistency.
The SNJO's latest subject, trumpet master Dizzy Gillespie, was accused of merely going through the motions in later years. But he still left a vital legacy – bebop challenges, Afro-Cuban grooving, mighty chops and spectacularly puffed-out cheeks – all of which, except maybe the last, figured here. 
Still, trumpeter Tom McNiven delivered a different type of spectacular cheek in one endearing solo as the SNJO's players added their own personal stamp to the music.
Attention to detail, superbly organised section playing and a strong feeling for content and context are all taken as read now with the SNJO. So it was here – but there was also a tremendous vigour and hunger to A Night in Tunisia, Manteca et al – pieces that, in other hands, can often produce tired familiarity. In fact – and this is a feat – the sprinting, intricate Salt Peanuts sounded almost like a new work.
What stood out above all, however, was the maturity of the musicianship. Ryan Quigley, cast in the unenviable lead trumpet role, responded superbly, playing the high-register parts with conviction and improvising with well-thought-out shape, clarity and confidence. Each procession to the soloist's microphone brought further expressions of imaginative depth and assurance, and soloists and the full orchestra alike were, 
once again, spurred on and supported by the alert vision of drummer Alyn Cosker. 

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SCOTTISH NATIONAL JAZZ ORCHESTRA ****
QUEEN'S HALL, EDINBURGH
THE SNJO's latest programme focused on the Kansas City Suite, composed and arranged by Benny Carter for the Count Basie Orchestra in 1960.
Carter's genius in the ten loosely related portraits which make up the suite lay in allowing the riff-based, improvisational feel of the 1930s outfit to emerge in the context of the more sophisticated arrangements of the 1960 band.
Tommy Smith and the SNJO intensified the echoes of the earlier band by stretching the tunes out and adding many more soloists. Smith also shuffled the original sequence, and filled out each half with a sextet arrangement.
Special guest Brian Kellock was prominently featured on piano and the full ensemble playing captured both the idiom and the spirit of the music in exhilarating style.
Kenny Mathieson, the Scotsman

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Tommy Smith & SNJO play Dizzy Gillespie
The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra played a concert dedicated to the music of Dizzy Gillespie the other week. It was fiery stuff - hearing the big band run through the bebop charts was impressive.

It was familiar music: these were tunes I grew up listening to (even if I didn't enjoy them at the time!). I saw Gillespie play several times in the seventies - small group settings at the Nice jazz festival (mmm... nice) - his trademark upturned trumpet horn to the fore. (I must have some pictures, somewhere.) I have more versions of A Night In Tunisia than any other tune*, I think - three by Gillespie in various combinations, a couple by Bird, a couple by Art Blakey, another by Tommy Chase, one by Sonny Rollins, and I must have missed some too; so this is familiar fare.

The SNJO make a habit of this kind of thing: pulling an artist's music out of the archives, bringing the familiar repertory back to life. In the past few years, they have toured the music of Ellington, Mingus, a good few Miles Davis/Gil Evans sets, and many more - they were down in London recently playing Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. They do one or two tours a year; they are well rehearsed, the different sections melding well - and the rhythm section pushing them forward. Lead and conducted by Tommy Smith, he lets the band shine - he plays relatively few solos given his stature in the music and in particular in the Scottish jazz scene: instead, it is the orchestra that he frees up to excel. 

The first set seemed quite brash - even without amplification, they were loud. They got the crowd-pleaser A Night In Tunisia out of the way early on - it was the second number, after the opener of Shaw Nuff, with Ryan Quigley taking the trumpet honours to Martin Kershaw's take on Bird - though Kershaw and Paul Towndrow vied on alto. It was very much the trumpets' night, though: Quigley and Tom McNiven sharing out the solos, both excelling at hitting the high notes and performing pyrotechnics with their horns. The orchestra seemed to be taking the numbers quite slowly, maybe a little hesitantly.

After A Night In Tunisia, Smith compared Gillespie's tune to John Barry's James Bond theme. Many years ago, I remember someone pointing out that Barry's tunes was really a bebop solo slowed right down, and Smith illustrated this - the tune of A Night In Tunisia fitted James Bond exactly.

The second set seemed much better; I don't know if this was me relaxing into the sound, or the band losing their nerves. Either way, it just seemed to flow better - it seemed like the band were enjoying it more. The set opened with a blistering Manteca, Quigley and McNiven joined by the third trumpet of Paul Newton down at the front, the three of them exchanging lines as the excitement built; and the orchestra blew their hearts out in the riffing of the theme. This was brilliant, exciting music, powering to a crescendo of trumpets. Wonderful.

They closed the evening with the onomatopoeic Salt Peanuts, starting as a drum feature - usually I find drum solos inordinately dull, but Alyn Cosker - who had been a little subdued earlier in the evening - shone here. The band played this a lot faster than some of the other numbers - I had wondered if the music was just too complicated for a big band to take at the speed it had been written for (the trumpeter and critic Benny Green once wrote of how he got the sheet music for Gillespie's tune Bebop to find out what all the fuss was about; he didn't get it - there was nothing hard to play in the dots; and then he heard the original recording, taken at about four times the speed Green had been practicing it). Quigley and Kershaw, and then McNiven and Towndrow, bounced phrases off each other, having an old fashioned duel, each pair upping the stakes. And then, with the orchestra shouting an ecstatic Salt Peanuts! Salt Peanuts! and a final bomb from the bass drum, they were done.

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Scottish National Jazz Orchestra

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PERTH CONCERT HALL

THE SCOTTISH National Jazz Orchestra's first visit to the new hall in Perth also marked the start of a five-date tenth-anniversary tour reflecting the diversity of the material they have tackled under saxophonist Tommy Smith's leadership. The first set focused on repertory from the jazz mainstream, including music by Billy Strayhorn, excerpts from two Ellington suites, Oliver Nelson's ebullient Hoedown, Miles Davis and Gil Evans's elegant Springsville, and charts from the Stan Kenton book. They slipped in more contemporary compositions after the break, including Pat Metheny's Have You Heard, Chick Corea's more aggressive Humpty Dumpty, and Maria Schneider's typically complex arrangement of Days of Wine and Roses. Mingus's Ecclusiastics provided the raunchiest music of the night, and the Basie band's April in Paris closed proceedings. The line-up featured a couple of debutants from Smith's Youth Jazz Orchestra, such as the precocious Liam Heath, who dispatched his flugelhorn solo on Springsville with an aplomb well beyond his 13 years.

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KENNY MATHESON
Friday, 4th November 2005
The Scotsman

The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra Plays Monk
Starbucks Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival

Music Four in One; Ruby My Dear; Epistrophy; Ask me Now; Skippy; Straight, No Chaser; Crepuscule With Nelly; Evidence; Brilliant Corners; Round Midnight; all composed by Thelonius Monk.
Musicians The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra of Scotland, Tommy Smith (Director); Martin Kershaw, Paul Towndrow. Tommy Smith, Brian Molley, Allon Beauvoisin (saxophones); Ryan Quigley, Tom MacNiven, Linsey McDonald, Philip Cardwell (trumpets); Chris Greive, Scott Annison, Lorna McDonald (trombones); Steve Hamilton (piano); Aidan O'Donnell (acoustic bass); John Blease (drums)
Venue The Hub
Address Castlehill
Reviewer Charlie Napier

Introduced as "the leading big band in Britain today", the 15 members of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra took the stage at the Hub tonight to pay tribute to one of the greats of modern jazz, Thelonius Monk. The Director and Conductor of the Orchestra, Tommy Smith, had asked ten modern composers/arrangers to take one Thelonius Monk piece each and arrange or "re-compose" it as they wished. The results were presented tonight with great success.

The Scottish Naptional Jazz OrchestraAlthough not all the players in the Orchestra were given featured roles in the pieces, those that did showed off their technical skills and performing techniques brilliantly. The Orchestra's ensemble playing was excellent but there were just a very few occasions when the balance between the sections might have been a little better, but overall, a great performance. While the performance of the players, and the orchestra as a whole, were probably what most of the audience came to hear, I am sure that there were others who wanted to hear what these new composers/arrangers did with Monk's tunes. Unless one knew the tunes intimately in Monk's own arrangements, I think that it would have been difficult for an ordinary jazz fan (like me) to compare the originals and these new versions.

Four in One, "re-composed" by John Hollenbeck, was the first offering. A good driving, rhythmic piece with a Tommy Smith solo got the concert off to a good start. This was followed by a ballad, Ruby My Dear, that had been arranged by the pianist of the orchestra, Steve Hamilton. The opening, slow, section caught the essence of the Monk style and after a brilliant solo by a muted trumpet the piece changed up a gear with a piano solo in typical Monk style, followed by another trumpet solo. The Tim Garland version of Epistrophy followed. Tommy admitted after the concert that he did not know what the title meant; well, after looking up a dictionary, I would really like to hear both the original Monk version and this new version again, just to see if they lived up to the title. An "epistrophe" is a grammatical form where a word is repeated at the end of successive clauses. One can see how this could be translated into musical form, so it would be interesting to see if there was a musical "word" (a theme or motif) that was repeated at the end of successive musical phrases. This was followed by Julian Arguelles' version of Ask me Now, which featured a trumpet solo during a Latin-American type rhythmic section which followed a slow and soft introduction from piano and flute (played by Tommy Smith). The first half ended with John Rae's working of Skippy, featuring the drums and the piano played in typical Monk style.

The second half opened with Laura MacDonald's treatment of Straight, No Chaser. Again, I would like to listen to this version again to see if Laura knew about the story told by Buddy Collette in his book Jazz Generations. Buddy had been asked to arrange some pieces of Monk's for Monk to play with an augmented quartet at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1984. Monk would not sit at the piano during rehearsal of Straight, No Chaser until Monk's saxophonist, Charlie Rouse, said "Monk likes everything short", so Buddy went to the band and told them that instead of playing smoothly, they should play more staccato. This they did and Monk smiled, sat down at the piano and "played with feeling".

This was followed by Crepuscule With Nelly arranged by Florian Ross, a German despite his name. Monk must have known something about etymology or lexicography, if one heeds his titles, although who did what with Nelly at twilight has to be imagined and did it involve the piano?. Evidence, arranged by Joe Locke, an American, featured both trumpet and baritone saxophone as well as giving the bass player a chance to shine. Chris Greive, the lead trombonist from New Zealand, arranged the next piece, Brilliant Corners, which featured the piano again and this time the soprano saxophone. Tommy Smith exhibited his own skill and inventiveness in his own arrangement of the Monk classic, Round Midnight, which brought the concert to a most satisfying conclusion. A most enjoyable evening.
© Charlie Napier, 31 July 2004.

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Scottish National Jazz Orchestra
Queen's Hall, Edinburgh


TOMMY Smith had originally intended this concert of newly commissioned music to be a showcase for two of the great English jazz pianists, Keith Tippett and John Taylor. In the event, Taylor had to decline the invitation due to other commitments, and Smith turned instead to American pianist Geoffrey Keezer.

If nothing else, that ensured that we would hear two very different approaches to writing for a large jazz band. Tippett is a luminary of the so-called free-jazz scene, while Keezer is more usually associated with the bop-based school of Art Blakey.

Neither of those classifications is much more than a convenient shorthand, however, and both musicians revealed much wider and more musically diverse artistic visions in the course of their new pieces.

The concert opened with Tippett’s You Never Know, a continuous piece that alternated between teasing allusions to conventional jazz big-band writing and much more freely improvised passages, often for two soloists simultaneously, and in one case for four saxophonists blasting away in a tangle of interwoven lines.

Tippett’s own trademark scrapings and rustlings inside the piano, and his wind chimes and bells hung from it, added delicate shades of timbre and colour to an already busy musical palette.

The gloriously turbulent, energised music was a hard act to follow. As anticipated, Geoffrey Keezer took a very different approach in his South Alaska Suite, inspired by a journey through that unspoiled territory by boat. While Tippett left us to our own imaginations, Keezer provided detailed programme notes on each of the seven sections of his carefully structured composition.

His music was more conventional than Tippett’s in terms of deployment of soloists and his use of instrumental textures and musical structures, but lacked nothing in invention or originality.

The concert provided another testing evening for the musicians of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, who proved again they can handle anything that their director chooses to throw at them.

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KENNY MATHIESON
Monday, 14th February 2005
The Scotsman

Scottish National Jazz Orchestra
The Hub, Edinburgh
5 stars
The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s annual concert at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival again focused on specially commissioned new arrangements of music by classic jazz artists. Last year it was Thelonious Monk, and this time round saxophonist Tommy Smith, the SNJO’s tireless director, chose another great pianist, Chick Corea.
It was doubtless coincidence that eight of the ten arrangements included solos specifically for Smith, and he doubtless did not want to go against the expressed intentions of the arrangers and re-assign them to other players, but it might have been good to have the solo spotlight cast a little wider. Smith, it must be said, was in hugely inventive form through his heavy workload, and nowhere more so than in a titanic tenor solo on his own arrangement of Corea’s ‘Quartet No 1’.
The concept worked very well with Corea’s music, which proved amenable to very diverse treatments without losing its authentic flavour. The 15-piece band was bolstered by two guests, lead trumpeter Paul Newton from London and, driving the music in incomparable fashion from the heart of the band, American drummer Gary Novak, a frequent member of Corea’s own bands.
Some of the arrangements made an immediate in-your-face impact, notably Joe Locke’s mercurial, highly energised ‘Inner Space’ and Fritz Reynold’s ‘Spain’, with a memorable trombone solo from the fast-developing Phil O’Malley. Others were more subtle in their design, as in Geoffrey Keezer’s beautifully textured ‘Eternal Child’, with a lovely alto solo from Laura MacDonald, and Manu Picard’s breezy, distinctly Gallic account of Corea’s early classic ‘Tones for Joan’s Bones’.
Tenor saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski was featured on a couple of tunes, including ‘Spain’ and Brian Byrne’s arrangement of ‘Crystal Silence’. Appropriately, though, the most featured soloist after Smith was pianist Steve Hamilton, who also contributed a subtle and quietly understated ballad arrangement on ‘Quartet No 2’.
Christian Jacob’s inventive arrangement of ‘Bud Powell’ was the most conventionally ‘brassy’ sounding chart, as befits a man who has arranged regularly for Maynard Ferguson’s brass-heavy band sound.
Florian Ross’s teasing take on ‘Humpty Dumpty’ opened proceedings, and the concert closed with perhaps the most radical reworking of all the arrangements, Mario Caribe’s vibrant reinvention of ‘Armando’s Rumba’ (dedicated to Corea’s father) as ‘Armando’s Mambo’, which incorporated a series of traded exchanges between Smith on tenor and Laura MacDonald on alto.
Kenny Mathieson

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SNJO with Tam White, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, Rob Adams
February 12 2007, the Herald

The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra's value as a resource took on another dimension with this latest project which pitted director Tommy Smith's always well prepared charges with the stone mason grit of Tam White's inimitable voice.

SNJO has worked with singers before but this was White's show and while the orchestra's members added creative solos, the Saughton bluesman was in his element.

He has, after all, waited some 50 years to take Ray Charles's place in front of a big band. The good times still rolled, though, especially when Brian Kellock jumped into Alright, Okay, You Win with a stormin' piano solo that transposed all the energy and electricity he and White create in their long-standing duo.

Drawing material from Charles and the Big Joes - Williams and Turner - White growled with malevolence on Evil Man Blues, introduced a note of roaring regret on Everyday I Have the Blues and infused Hallelujah I Love Her So with a roguish enthusiasm.

If Stevie Wonder's Living for the City didn't transfer from funk to convincing big-band swing, White will doubtless reflect that we're ay' learnin'. Mind you, he should know not to invite an Edinburgh audience to clap along to Shake, Rattle and Roll as citizens from the seat of Scotland's parliament exercised their democratic right to emphasise whatever beat they could find with comic results.


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SCOTTISH NATIONAL JAZZ ORCHESTRA WITH TAM WHITE, Kenny Mathieson, Scotsman
QUEEN'S HALL, EDINBURGH Feb 2007

SINGER Tam White has waited a long time for the chance to sing in front of a top class jazz big band. He featured on every item in the most populist programme the SNJO have ever presented, an amalgam of blues, jazz and rhythm and blues that epitomised the singer's approach over the years.

He was in good voice throughout, pacing himself nicely across a set that ranged from his own semi-surreal The Dream to classic r'n'b songs from the repertoire of Ray Charles and Big Joe Williams, many of which employed arrangements by the late Thad Jones.

It was fascinating to hear songs he has sung for years - Smack Dab in the Middle, (You Made Your) Move to Soon, Every Day I Have the Blues, Let the Good Times Roll - remade with the colour and impact of the big band instrumentation, and his own songs also came over well.

The SNJO continue to impress not only in the quality of their performances, but in their ability to produce splendidly idiomatic ensemble playing and soloing."

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The SNJO is a highly professional outfit that deserves success. Under the directorship of Tommy Smith, it is bound to find exactly that."
Pat Quinn - EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS

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"I'm really excited about working this new piece out with Tommy and the band."
Joe Lovano - THE HERALD

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"Great Heavens, this was what foodies might call a belt tightener. Not so much because of the amount of music it contained, which took up no more than the average concert length, but because of the richness and variety on offer."
Rob Adams - THE HERALD

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"The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, with guest performer Lovano, pulled out all the stops, produced note-perfect renditions and wowed them in the aisles. All of which was a credit to music director Tommy Smith.There is no question, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra gets better and better with every outing. It's an institution we should support and cherish."
Pat Quinn - EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS

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"The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra has produced some exhilarating repertory projects during its half-decade in existence, as well as some scintillating new music, but this concert with American clarinetist Ken Peplowski took them into unexplored territory. This is the first time it has been performed in the UK, and the SNJO rose to the challenge in fine style. It was precisely that balance of classic nostalgia with fresh creativity which made this concert - and Goodman's trademark sound - come alive."
Kenny Mathieson - THE SCOTSMAN

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"The SNJO isn't new to the task of resurrecting some of Davis' best known pieces. They gave Sketches of Spain the full treatment a couple of years ago and have also performed pieces by Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. This is an extraordinary event for Edinburgh. When Tommy did this with Sketches of Spain, Miles Davis fans all over the World were checking it out."
Pat Quinn - EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS

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