Concerts Thursday 17Th November
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C0NCERTS Thursday 17th November Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) Glasgow Friday 18th November The Blue Lamp, Aberdeen Concerts Thursday 17th November, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) Glasgow Friday 18th November, The Blue Lamp, Aberdeen WELCOME TO TONIGHT’S CONCERT BY THE 2016 EURORADIO JAZZ ORCHESTRA It is a great honour to be hosting the 2016 Euroradio Jazz Orchestra. We are particularly thrilled that Tommy Smith, Scotland’s most prominent jazz artist and a leading and prolific educator is such an integral part of this project. The Euroradio Jazz Orchestra is a unique initiative which supports jazz at the highest level. Each player here tonight has been nominated to represent their country by their national broadcaster. We hope that they will enjoy both a profound musical experience and also make lasting friendships as they build on their professional careers. The concert at RCS Glasgow on 17th November will be recorded, and made available for broadcast by EBU radio organizations from 25th November onwards. It will be broadcast on Radio 3’s Jazz Line Up on the10th December 2016. Highlights will also feature on Radio Scotland’s Jazz House. And finally, we are delighted to introduce Alexandra Ridout, the reigning BBC Young Musician of the Year - Jazz Award to our colleagues in Europe to perform Kenny Wheeler’s solo part in the Sweet Sister Suite. Enjoy a unique moment in jazz history tonight! Lindsay Pell Senior Producer, Music BBC Scotland | BBC Radio 3 BBC Broadcasting House 40 Pacific Quay Glasgow G51 1DA Email: [email protected] +44 (0)141 422 6640 THE EURORADIO JAZZ ORCHESTRA Musical Director: Tommy Smith THE MUSIC Sweet Sister Suite (composed and arranged by Kenny Wheeler) Soloist: Alexandra Ridout, trumpet Interval Numbers (from Torah, a jazz suite composed and arranged by Tommy Smith) Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love (composed by Charles Mingus; arranged by Tommy Smith) Beauty and the Beast 4th Movement (from Beauty and the Beast, a jazz suite composed and arranged by Tommy Smith) Yes Or No (composed by Wayne Shorter; arranged by Tommy Smith) Splatch (composed by Marcus Miller; arranged by Fred Sturm) The running order of this programme may be subject to change. NOTES ON THE MUSIC Jazz is an art form that routinely contradicts received wisdoms and stubbornly resists all but the broadest of categorizations. Musicians, audiences and commentators may struggle with the term, but everyone knows great jazz when they hear it. The existence of the Euroradio Jazz Orchestra addresses several recurring points that are central to any conversation about jazz. It consists largely of the best young musicians from across Europe who come together at virtually a moment’s notice to perform highly improvisational music. Their commitment validates the universal contention that jazz is international, inclusive, creative, contemporary and relevant. These are ideas that jazz trumpeter and composer Kenny Wheeler, whose Sweet Sister Suite takes up the first half of this programme, consistently brought to his outstanding music. This particular work was commissioned in 1996 by Tommy Smith and written over a two-year period. Wheeler often composed by noting down ideas and fragments whenever and wherever they occurred to him; a method that he was seen to employ while recording and touring with the Smith’s quartet in 1997. The Sweet Sister Suite was premiered by the newly formed SNJO in May 1998 with Norma Winstone on vocals and Smith at the helm, and it is performed here on a public platform for only the second time. It is a textured, measured work, very much in the trademark style of a musician who treasured melody, through which he expressed a warm, humane and quietly passionate musical personality. The second half of the concert consists of a selection of pieces chosen as much for their diversity as their relative modernity. The contrast between Smith’s lush reading of Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love composed by Charles Mingus, and Fred Sturm’s storming arrangement of Marcus Miller’s Splatch could not be greater, yet they are both visceral, immediate and powerful. Those tunes featured on the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s landmark album American Adventure alongside Wayne Shorter’s Yes or No, which also features in this show. The recordings from those New York sessions showcased the respective talents of vocalist Kurt Elling, guitarist Mike Stern and vibraphonist Joe Locke. This evening sees some of the brightest young musicians in Europe enthusiastically stepping up as featured soloists, along with Tommy Smith whose contributions on tenor saxophone are invariably voiced in the most personal of ways. The inherent bravado of contemporary jazz is ramped up to the hilt on two compositions by Tommy Smith that invite the European Radio Jazz Orchestra to bring all the ambition, energy and individualism they can muster. Numbers from Smith’s Torah suite was written for Joe Lovano, while the fourth movement of Beauty and the Beast is from a work composed originally for David Liebman. Both men are highly regarded saxophonists who relish challenges. The music is therefore a gift and a challenge to career jazz musicians who are ready to respond to the energetic demands of thrusting modern music. In many ways the inclusion of Yes or No squares a jazz circle, for it is one of several 20th century standards that has a permanent place on the never-ending learning curve. It’s fun to play, it’s great to hear and it never gets old. That could be a description of jazz itself, and it’s personified by a spirit of camaraderie that draws the international membership of Euroradio Jazz Orchestra together in performance and in praise of an art form that is destined to stay forever young. Tommy Smith Musical Director Tommy Smith is a leading light in European jazz, first and foremost as one of the finest saxophonists of his generation, and latterly as the founder and current director of The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra (SNJO). His outstanding achievements affirm his status as an international recording artist; a composer and arranger of extraordinary ambition; and not least, as the current Head of Jazz at the Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow (RCS). His prolific career began in earnest when, aged only sixteen, he recorded his first album Giant Strides. He was rewarded with a scholarship to Berklee College of Music, an experience that has shaped his affirmative approach to jazz. Since then, he has made twenty-seven solo albums as a leader for Blue Note, Linn and his own label Spartacus Records. Smith has also earned the regard, support and friendship of the many respected jazz figures with whom he has collaborated and created great jazz. They include, but are not limited to, Gary Burton, Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Kenny Barron, Arild Andersen, John Scofield, Kurt Elling, Makoto Ozone, Dizzy Gillespie, Trilok Gurtu and Jaco Pastorius. His tenure with the SNJO has seen critically acclaimed performances and recordings of programmed and commissioned works including hugely popular treatments of Ellington, Strayhorn, Coltrane, Gershwin, Weather Report, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter and Bobby Wellins. Tommy Smith is also founder/director of The Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra and founder of the first ever full-time jazz course at the RCS. He also holds three honorary doctorates from Heriot-Watt, Glasgow-Caledonian and Edinburgh Universities, and a Professorship from the RCS. He is recipient of numerous awards, particularly for his work with the SNJO and his work as a jazz educator. His trio album ‘KARMA’ (with bassist Kevin Glasgow and drummer Alyn Cosker) won him his sixth Scottish Jazz Award for album of the year in 2012. More recently, he was honoured with the Parliamentary Jazz Award for Jazz Educator of the Year 2016. Tommy Smith’s most recent recording, ‘Modern Jacobite’ (2016) is a daring excursion into the realm of modern classical music featuring the full might of the 80-piece BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. It contains his original symphonic work, entitled simply Jacobite, which is an elegiac painting in music destined to endure “beyond his own lifetime”. EURORADIO JAZZ ORCHESTRA 2016 Soprano / Alto Saxophone 1: Aleksander Paal Estonia Alto Saxophone 2: Max Zenger Finland Tenor Saxophone 1: Elisabeth Lid Trøen Norway Tenor Saxophone 2: Basile Rosselet Switzerland Baritone Saxophone: Jakub Cirkl Czech Republic Trumpet 1: Darko Sedak Benčič Slovenia Trumpet 2: Alexander Kranabetter Austria Trumpet 3: Nick Klaman Sweden Trumpet 4: Jakob Sørensen Denmark Trombone 1: Richard Šanda Czech Republic Trombone 2: Luca Spiler France Trombone 3: Kosta Vukasinović Serbia Bass Trombone 4: Kristoffer Siggstedt Sweden Guitar: Rob Luft UK Piano: Peter Johnstone UK Acoustic Bass: Miha Koren Slovenia Drums: Giacomo Reggiani Switzerland Singer on Sweet Sister Suite: Irini Arabatzi Greece Trumpet Soloist on Sweet Sister Suite: Alexandra Ridout UK Every year, the Euroradio Jazz Group, under the umbrella of the European Broadcasting Union puts together a European jazz big band tour headlining as the Euroradio Jazz Orchestra. Each EBU Member may send one musician under age 30 to perform on tour with the EJO in four concerts, concluding with two Euroradio Public Jazz Concerts organized by the host broadcaster. One of these concerts is always recorded by the EBU host broadcaster, which is responsible for rehearsals and all logistical and promotional planning. The 2016 EJO concerts will be based in Scotland this autumn at the kind invitation of the BBC. The European Broadcasting Union is the world’s leading alliance of public service media, with 73 Members in 56 countries across Europe, and an additional 34 associates in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Our Members operate almost 2,000 television and radio channels alongside numerous online platforms. Together they reach an audience of more than one billion people around the world, and broadcast in more than 120 languages.