Nu-Age Sounds: Scotland's best young jazz musicians to appear in SNJO showcase

Devised by the SNJO’s director, saxophonist Tommy Smith, Nu-Age Sounds sees the internationally acclaimed big band joined by 2022 Scottish album of the year winner, pianist Fergus McCreadie, bassist Ewan Hastie, BBC Young Jazz Musician 2022, as well as saxophonists Helena Kay and Matt Carmichael, trombonists Noushy and Liam Shortall (whose corto.alto collective has been at the heart of the vibrant Glasgow jazz scene) and vocalist kitti, all of them award-winners in recent years.

McCreadie, Hastie, Carmichael, Noushy and Shortall are former students of Smith’s at the jazz course he established and runs at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, a catalyst for Glasgow’s current hotbed of emerging jazz players.

“Educating musicians of this calibre in harmony, composition, etc, was a joy,” says Smith, “I am very proud of where they have all reached. It’s also great to have kitti and Helena on board as they are very much part of Scotland’s thriving young jazz scene.”

All of the featured musicians are contributing new compositions to the concerts, with some of them writing their own arrangements for jazz orchestra while others are having theirs handled by arrangers with whom Smith and the SNJO often work. Pianist-composer Florian Ross is arranging music by bassist Hastie, while saxophonist and bandleader Fabia Mantwill is setting compositions by kitti and Noushy. McCreadie is unveiling a new work, As the Mist Clears, although his place at the piano will be taken for the third concert by Pete Johnstone, a regular collaborator with Smith and another former Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the Year.

Johnstone will also play with Smith’s re-assembled powerhouse Karma band, with bass-guitarist Kevin Glasgow and drummer Alyn Cosker, for which Smith has written SNJO arrangements.

With a view to attracting younger audiences, specifically commissioned video backdrops will accompany each 12-minute piece, produced by another of Smith’s RSC students, Dillon Barrie, the man behind the popular Supersonic Glasgow hip-hop and jazz nights, along with his visuals team.

“Each of the pieces has a different vibe,” Smith explains, “and this is reflected for concert-goers on to the stage backcloth.”

Smith is in no doubt as to the impact of the jazz course at the RCS on the immediate Glasgow scene, not to mention the wider jazz world: “Since 2009 all these musicians who have gone through the course have had to create some sort of scene for themselves, so they have places every night of the week where they play with each other and everyone’s influencing everyone else. Also, of course, there’s a traditional Scottish music course [at the RCS] and a lot of the jazz players get involved with the trad players.

“So there’s a lot to be said for keeping the musicians here, but obviously the world is a lot bigger than Scotland, which is a tiny country that can’t support a proper career, so it’s good to see these musicians branching out to England and Europe and that’s the way it has to go, but they have to start somewhere and they either start somewhere else and stay somewhere else or they keep their ties here.”

Smith regards the forthcoming Nu-Age tour as “a standout” for the orchestra (which embarks on its first ever collaboration with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in May, featuring pianist Makoto ozone and a Gershwin-Bernstein programme): “It’s vital for the orchestra to embrace the younger audience,” he says, “and adopt a new focus on future sounds and visions, widening our musical horizons.”

Nu-Age Sounds is at Dundee Rep Theatre, 1 March; Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, 2 March; and Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 3 March, see www.snjo.co.uk