reviews

Exploration - The Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra featuring Joe Locke

At a time when the oral jazz tradition is in increasing jeopardy, you've got to admire Tommy Smith. Berklee schooled in the 1980s, the Scottish saxophonist had a promising career in the United States. He was a member of Gary Burton's mid-1980s quintet, with the vibraphonist producing Step by Step—the first of four records Smith released on Blue Note between 1988 and 1992—featuring an all star line-up including John Scofield, Eddie Gomez and Jack DeJohnette. But after a few years in the US, Smith decided to return home to Scotland, where he's since set up his own Spartacus label and released a series of fine albums, including another all-star session, Evolution (ESC, 2003), and Forbidden Fruit (Spartacus, 2005), with his Scottish quartet.

As strong as his own projects are, it's possible that Smith's greatest achievement may be his formation of the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra in 2002. Featuring some of the country's best up-and-coming jazz musicians, with ages as young as fifteen (rumor has it some were even younger) and as old as twenty-three, Smith has created a unique educational opportunity. Schooling is one thing; getting out on the bandstand and living it is another, and with regular performances at Henry's, the hub of the Edinburgh jazz scene and festival appearances throughout the country, Smith has turned the TSYJO not only into a crack big band, but a source from which the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra recruits. Exploration is the TSYJO's recorded debut, and if some of these players are still too young to shave, you'd never know it.

It may be a shame that Smith's own playing—which began as a unique confluence of Jan Garbarek and Michael Brecker but has long since evolved into something more personal—isn't represented, but it's clear that the goal is to feature these young players, with nearly everyone getting some solo space during this fifty-minute set. Still, he recruits guest vibraphonist Joe Locke, who brings some added improvisational élan to a set that ranges from classic material by Duke Ellington (a hard-swinging “Cottontail”), Oliver Nelson (a rousing and vivacious “Hoe Down”) and Dizzy Gillespie (an ambling “Night in Tunisia”) to more modern compositions by Kenny Wheeler (the characteristically lyrical ballad, “Gentle Piece”), Fred Sturm (the boldly dramatic “Chronometry”) and Lars Jansson (the slightly knotty closer, “Now”). Throughout, Locke treads the fine line he always has, clearly rooted in the jazz tradition but bringing his own forward-looking approach, making every solo vivid and modernistic.

It's a high-energy set that will come as no small surprise to big band fans expecting a youth-laden ensemble to be good, but more an exercise in education than invention. With outstanding charts played with the kind of dynamics, maturity and requisite mix of loose and tight you'd expect from a more seasoned group, the successes of Exploration will turn skeptics into believers.

John Kelman (All About Jazz), February 05, 2008

Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra: Exploration

**** (4 stars)

SAXOPHONIST Tommy Smith launched this big band, at his own expense, in 2002 to help foster the cream of young Scottish jazz talent, and their debut recording amply illustrates the depth of that talent. Bolstered by some section leaders from the senior Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, the band were joined by American vibes maestro Joe Locke as a dazzling guest soloist for a brief Scottish tour in February. Sponsorship from Shell UK enabled both tour and recording (thus the title). The six tracks are typical of their imaginative repertoire, mixing fresh versions of jazz warhorses Cottontail and A Night in Tunisia with contemporary compositions by Kenny Wheeler, Lars Jansson and Fred Sturm.

Equally at home on the exuberant country-inflected idiom of Oliver Nelson's boisterous Hoedown and the reflective intricacies of Wheeler's Gentle Piece, the players produce precise and assured ensemble work and imaginative soloing at every turn.

Kenny Mathieson (the SCOTSMAN), December 21, 2007

Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra / Joe Locke, Exploration

Tommy Smith knows all about youth jazz - he was a teenage saxophone prodigy himself, on the road with vibes star Gary Burton when barely out of school. Smith has been running an ambitious youth orchestra in Scotland for years, and this set (mainly distributed through the saxophonist's website) doesn't just chronicle the sound of the latest edition, but adds the exciting American vibraphone virtuoso Joe Locke. The band works up a stomping energy on Oliver Nelson's Hoedown, and a wild free-jazzy heat across darkly sonorous harmonies (with the help of Adam Jackson's frantic alto sax) on Fred Strurm's Chronometry. But it's Kenny Wheeler's autumnal Gentle Piece, introduced by guest Michael Janisch's lyrical bass and patiently coloured in by Locke, that makes you forget you're listening to a youth band. A barging account of A Night in Tunisia includes a succinctly swinging solo from prizewinning young pianist and very bright prospect Alan Benzie. It's classic hard-riffing big-band swing, of course. Even Locke's charismatic drive on the vibraphone doesn't quite make it a necessity - but it's a swaggeringly confident testament to the ongoing high quality of Scottish jazz.

John Fordham (The Guardian), December 14, 2007

The Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra
"Exploration"

Featuring special guest Joe Locke on vibes – who seizes the attention with every solo, such is his unbridled vigour and tumultuous energy – this album puts Tommy Smith's young jazz orchestra through its paces courtesy of a sensibly chosen but by no means clichéd repertoire that allows members to explore their nascent soloing capabilities as well as honing their ensemble skills. Beginning with a wonderfully rumbustious visit to Oliver Nelson's 'Hoe Down', complete with cowboy whoops, and taking in big-band staples such as 'A Night in Tunisia' and 'Cottontail' as well as Kenny Wheeler's delightfully plangent 'Gentle Piece', the orchestra plays with a balance of panache and poise that belies their youth and relative inexperience at this level of music-making (ages range from the mid-teens to the early twenties – pianist Alan Benzie, for instance, was voted first Young Scottish Musician of the Year shortly after the band's formation and is currently studying at Berklee), and, driven as they are by one of the most compelling bassists around (and a frequent performer at the Vortex), guest Mike Janisch, they prove on this album that jazz is truly flourishing, right down to its grass roots, north of the border.

Freelance Jazz Writer - Chris Parker (www.vortexjazz.co.uk)

ABERDEEN JAZZ FESTIVAL
BLUE LAMP, ABERDEEN
 

The day began with another packed house in the same venue for Tommy
Smith's Youth Jazz Orchestra, augmented by American vibraphone virtuoso
Joe Locke. Smith provided ample opportunity for the young players to
show what they could do in a set that combined music from their regular
repertoire with a composition written for this mini-tour by trumpeter
Ryan Quigley and an arrangement by Locke of Lars Jansson's Lost.

KENNY MATHIESON, Mon 12 Mar 2007

TOMMY SMITH YOUTH JAZZ ORCHESTRA *****
JAZZ CENTRE, EDINBURGH

FORMED by the renowned Scots saxophonist Tommy Smith, the Youth Jazz Orchestra is a non-profit collective of some of the most promising jazz babies the country has to offer.

Jammed on to a tiny stage, this 20-strong crew ran the risk of knocking each other unconscious with their slide trombones and such like, but ducked and swerved in all the right places to present a cool evening of big band standards.

Smith conducted his young charges with understated ease, and even joined them on stage at the piano during a fine version of Stella by Starlight.

Absolutely fantastic playing all round, particularly from the sax and rhythm sections (a bass is never freer than when it's walkin'), this was a brilliant showing from young jazz Scotland and testament to old-hand Smith's commitment to the scene he helped to reignite in the 1980s.


PAUL WHITELAW

THE GLASGOW HERALD - Monday 15th May

JAZZ GLASGOW'S BIG NIGHT OUT, CITY HALLS
by ROB ADAMS

As a city with a long history of jazz occasions that tumble effortlessly into nostalgic conversations about great nights and unforgettable sights, Glasgow has been punching a bit below its weight in recent years.

Outside of the jazz festival, which once prided itself in being one of the best in Europe and annually suggests that there's still an audience for the music, concert activity has been erratic.

That may be about to change. Long-standing Scottish jazz promoters Assembly Direct, BBC Radio Scotland, Glasgow Cultural Enterprises and the aforementioned jazz festival have united to form a new organisation, Jazz Glasgow, aimed at increasing jazz activity and audiences in the city. A year-round programme of concerts, broadcasts and educational programmes is promised around the festival as the natural annual highlight.
The organisation's inaugural event coincided with the European Youth Jazz Orchestra's visit to the city. In keeping with previous editions, the 2006 version has quickly groomed 17 musicians from 17 countries into a tight, efficient unit. If the repertoire given to them to play was rather pedestrian, not to say quaint, the musicians themselves brought spark and energy that redeemed matters admirably.

Sharing the impressively spruced-up main auditorium's stage, Tommy Smith's youth orchestra was an even more youthful gathering, but as with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, Smith has them playing with terrific vigour and maturity well beyond their years.

Later, saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski survived the Recital Hall's bizarre lighting arrangement to register an emphatic display of persuasive solo building and well integrated group dynamics of the quality that, if Jazz Glasgow delivers, should be a more frequent occurrence from now on.

Youngsters hit a veteran high
Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra, Henry's Jazz Cellar, Edinburgh

 The future of Scottish jazz, already rosy-looking, gets brighter by the week. Last weekend, we had a disgustingly youthful Scottish National Jazz Orchestra not just playing but showing a real understanding for and empathy with the music of Duke Ellington's indispensable sidekick, Billy Strayhorn.

This weekend, the big orchestra's younger brothers and sisters served notice that there's plenty more talent in the pipeline.

The "youth" edition bears SNJO director Tommy Smith's name, and, as well as organising it in his own time, the saxophonist is financing rehearsal and travelling expenses out of his own pocket. However, it is the de facto Scottish National Youth Jazz Orchestra and once people who really should know better desist from putting red herrings in the way and stop behaving like, well, kippers, it'll be able to progress as such.

It's already made substantial musical progress since May when Smith, seeking to establish an elite youth jazz orchestra, wrote to leaders of education departments throughout Scotland, asking for their assistance in discovering the most talented young jazz musicians in Scotland.

Smith auditioned possibles in June, began monthly rehearsals at Glasgow Academy, blooded his charges before the year's end on SNJO dates, and, in January, established a monthly residency in Henry's. By Saturday, with ages ranging from 15 to 23, but with a strong bias towards the younger end, they were sounding like veterans. They needed to. This is grown-up music and far from your typical youth- orchestra fare. Only Strayhorn's Take the A Train, played and soloed on with a genuine feeling for both genre and context, would be considered a big-band staple. The other material, such as Maria Schneider's groovy Wyrgly and episodic Dance You Monster to My Soft Song, Kenny Wheeler's ebbing and flowing Gentle Piece and Charles Mingus's riotous Moanin', present demands of sustained concentration, textural shifts, and blowing stamina, all of which were met with confidence and ambition.

That the various sections - trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and rhythm, the latter a potent mixture of brawn and nous - play with the discipline and panache that Smith has instilled in SNJO comes as no surprise.

Impressive though this is, however, it's the players' individuality that really stands out.

Pondering how a 15-year-old, Alan Blair from Dumfries, can carry off Duke Ellington's Portrait of Louis Armstrong with such a grasp of the subject's trumpeting legacy or, at only a little older, baritone saxophonist Billy Fleming can inject Mingus's Moanin' with the requisite restless spirit from a standing start isn't intended to be ageist, just appreciative of youthful prowess and promise.

All 17 musicians have bucketfuls of both and, to do them full justice, would require turning a review into a roll-call.

Suffice to say that their next gig here on April 19 may well prove instructive as regards checking out the next generation, but it's just as likely to be a rewarding musical experience in its own right, too.

Rob Adams, The Herald, Mar 3, 2003