LAGAVULIN, Laphroaig, Bruichladdich, Bowmore, Ardbeg: not just the litany of legendary single malts treasured by whisky-lovers worldwide, but also the locations, in both distilleries and village halls, for most of the concerts making up the Islay Jazz Festival.

Jointly promoted by Jazz Scotland and Islay Arts Association, and currently sponsored by the pungently peaty Lagavulin – of which a complementary 16-year-old nip was offered to audiences at every gig – the festival this year marked its 13th outing, with not a whiff of that number’s customary ill luck.

Swedish singer Viktoria Tosltoy

Quite the contrary, in fact, with attendances among the busiest ever, and many visitors declaring 2011’s edition the best yet – no small accolade, given how the event’s unique blend of attractions, for jazz fans and musicians alike, have matured into an international reputation that belies its modest scale, a stature underscored by the BBC’s presence over the weekend, recording several shows for broadcast on both Radio Scotland and Radio 3.

This time drawing primarily from the contemporary Scottish and Scandinavian scenes, the Islay programme was as ever a model of high artistic quality allied to ingenious economy, with permutations from a corps of around 30 musicians lining up a total of 16 different acts, from soloists to septets. The multiple deployment of individual players makes a virtue of necessity by knitting them more collectively into the festival as a whole, capitalizing on the network of close relationships among Scottish jazzers in particular, while enabling them to enjoy displaying various strings to their bow.

The range of venues co-opted by the festival likewise adds value, not only via the distilleries’ intriguing mix of history, tradition and functionality, but also with Islay’s RSPB centre, where early arrivals could enjoy a guided birdwatching walk before the show, or the aptly-named Outback Gallery, a converted steading away up in Islay’s north-west corner, decked with diverse artworks and five minutes’ stroll from a beautiful deserted beach. Scattering concerts around the island, too, throughout the afternoon and evening, builds in opportunities to admire its splendid scenery, abetted by weather that substantially defied an unpromising forecast.

The first of Friday’s two concerts in the former maltings at Lagavulin distillery featured Swedish-born, Russian-descended singer Viktoria Tolstoy – great-granddaughter of iconic novelist Leo – accompanied by her regular sidemen Jacob Karlzon (piano), Hans Andersson (bass) and Rasmus Kihlberg (drums). While initial impressions of her voice seemed a close aural match to her willowy Nordic appearance, as her set progressed it revealed an impressively broad stylistic and expressive spectrum, taking in sultry Latin slinkiness in a cover of Prince’s ‘Te Amo Corazon'; languid sensuality in ‘Butterfly’, from her recent Letters to Herbie album; artful off-kilter passion in Esbjörg Svensson’s ‘Equilibrium’, and dusky, velvety soul in adapted Russian folk song ‘Little Pretty’.

Particularly notable among her band’s similarly strong and versatile support were Karlzon’s precisely chiselled yet freewheeling solos, foreshadowing his exhilarating headline performance – again flanked by Andersson and Kihlberg – on Sunday afternoon, which roved with expansive authority between dreamily delicate lyricism, dynamic drama and ebullient muscularity.

Tom Bancroft (photo credit www.johnneed.co.uk)

Back at Lagavulin, Tolstoy’s performance was followed by the debut outing of drummer Tom Bancroft’s new outfit Trio Red, also featuring English pianist Tom Cawley and Norwegian bassist Per Zanussi, performing mainly its leader’s own compositions, plus such varied borrowings as a mellow, breezy version of Charles Mingus’s ‘Jump Monk’ and a lovely interpretation of Jeff Buckley’s ‘Last Goodbye’, whose prevailing melancholy was offset by subtly affirmative undertones.

Bancroft’s idiosyncratic sources of inspiration were reflected in his pieces’ titles, prefaced by explanatory anecdotes that not only injected a shrewd note of comedy into the proceedings, but also gave an entry-point for appreciating the music. Thus ‘Boy Meets Boy Meets Girl Meets Girl’, for instance, vividly evoked the emotions and sensations of initial amorous attraction – across all possible gender combinations – while ‘Don’t Let Your Heart Get Broken Like Rickie Lee Jones’ was at once a gorgeous homage to a favourite musician and a tender father-daughter admonition.

Despite the ambitious, exploratory breadth of the players’ three-way conversation, its effervescent sense of the excitement Bancroft professed at launching the project, together with an adroit synthesis of the engaging and the challenging, lent it an openness that proved anything but forbidding.

A similar balance of adventurous creative mettle and more general accessibility characterized much of the weekend’s programme, including Saturday night’s terrific, often thrillingly tumultuous performance from pianist Brian Kellock, at Islay’s Gaelic cultural centre Ionad Chalium Chille Ile. Backed with corresponding verve by bassist Kenny Ellis and drummer Alyn Cosker, his set took exultant flight from material by the likes of Dexter Gordon, Horace Silver and Dizzy Gillespie, plus a few Broadway classics, to deliver as comprehensive a display of densely packed, masterfully articulated jazz pianism as you’ll hear anywhere.

Earlier the same day, Brass Jaw served up a lunchtime to remember at the aforementioned Outback Gallery, aligning alto, tenor and baritone saxes with trombone in ingenious arrangements of standards, pop tunes and originals, by turns fiercely funky and richly sonorous. In the late-night slot at Bowmore Hall, renowned Edinburgh soul/blues vocalist Subie Coleman led a hand-picked band including trumpeter Colin Steele, keyboardist Paul Harrison and saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski, in freshly rendered yet resonantly faithful covers of songs by Cream, Gil Scott-Heron, Etta James and Shirley Bassey that delighted the listening and the dancing crowd alike.

Multi-instrumentalist Fraser Fifield – switching between bagpipes, whistles, soprano saz and cajon – and guitarist Graeme Stephen provided yet another contrasting highlight come Sunday teatime, with their boldly conceived, superbly synchronized and deftly dovetailed deconstructions of traditional and folk-derived tunes, further enriched by digital delays, echoes and loops. The final hurragh at Bruichladdich Hall came courtesy of Mario Caribé’s six-man tribute to crossover pioneers the Jazz Crusaders, reprising both their 1960s soul/bop and 70s funk-based repertoire with lashings of style, swagger and scorching solos.

© Sue Wilson, 2011

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ISLAY Jazz Festival 2009 will be remembered for some stunning music, weather that suggested a favourable arrangement with a higher authority, and two incidents of airborne invasions.

Trygve Seim and Frode Haltli

One of these incidents was benign, its perpetrator seemingly having confused Ionad Chalium Chille Ile in Bowmore with the RSPB Centre at Gruinart and after being humanely captured and released through the front door, flew off into the night. The other airborne guests were an unalloyed menace who all but sabotaged the festival’s opening concert at Finlaggan on Friday.

The ancient seat of the Lords of the Isles provided, in theory certainly, a fantastic open air setting. Here in the late afternoon sunshine, among the ruins from whence MacDonalds controlled a significant part of the Atlantic seaboard in centuries past, a modern-day Macdonald, saxophonist Laura, engaged with Tom Bancroft on bodhran and an audience primed to hum droning notes on cue in a specially commissioned piece called For Two.

Suggestive of John Coltrane in My Favorite Things mode communing with the music that might have accompanied ancient clan feasting and celebration, this neatly tied in the location, the jazz festival and a nod towards the Scottish Government’s Year of Homecoming. Appreciating music increasingly became a challenge in the circumstances, however, as Islay’s midge population homed in.

Quite how Norwegian saxophonist Trygve Seim and accordionist Frode Haltli, cast in the role of Norsemen returning to the Viking lord and MacDonald clan founder, Somerled’s bailliewick, then managed to complete Seim’s commissioned Islay Suite is a cause of some wonder.

Written in three movements, it certainly captured the Longing, Travelling and Homecoming implied in its subtitles, with Seim’s typically yearning, glissando style carrying out over the adjacent loch and Haltli’s variously rugged and sweetly nimble accompaniments adding richness to the atmosphere.

But with the audience being eaten alive, only the hardy – and your correspondent – remained to hear its beautifully hymn-like finale, and to catch Seim’s smacking of a winged pest onto his cheek in the most restrainedly eloquent coda.

Seim and Haltli later made an impromptu appearance as support to the saxophonist’s group, The Source, at Bruichladdich Hall, and gave a brilliant concert of their own on Saturday at Ionad Chalium Chille Ile, which developed into a quintet performance as Seim’s Source colleagues joined in for the second half.

The range of expression the saxophonist and accordionist create on a repertoire extending from Scandinavian folk melodies to Middle Eastern songs of praise, Jewish laments and even Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ is truly extraordinary. In Haltli’s hands, the accordion becomes almost like a church organ, capable of making the tiniest notes sustained with breathtaking control and huge rumbling sounds alike.

Indeed, control is a Source watchword also. Their Friday concert showed amazing communication between the four musicians, with Seim, trombonist Oyvind Braekke and bassist Mats Eilertsen taking turns to lead the music into a new phase.

This is essentially free improvisation with linking themes, with the two horns coiling at times harmoniously and at other times with robust aggression, and throughout it all drummer Per Oddvar Johansen adding subtle touches, a quietly precise drive and a musical sensitivity that involves Indian bells and a bowed saw as well as knowingly applied sticks, brushes and beaters.

It was Johansen also who provided the resolution to Saturday’s joint performance – a kind of re-imagining of The Source and Different Cikadas album, with Haltli replacing the Cikada String Quartet – in the shape of his MmBall, its hauntingly insistent melody and quietly throbbing pulse remaining in the mind long after this master class in musicality, eclecticism and searching adventure had concluded.

Elsewhere, Laura Macdonald’s sextet gave a fine concert featuring older tunes and a quintet of new pieces written as part of her festival commission. These were melodically assured and played with a blend of vigour, enquiry and eminently compatible temperaments, with tenor saxophonist Phil Bancroft, pianist Paul Harrison and Macdonald herself making particularly creative solo contributions.

Bancroft was at the heart of another instalment in the zany, left-field but entirely congenial adventures of Trio AAB at a Lagavulin distillery that, on Sunday, might easily have been located on the Mediterranean’s shores. And adding a local touch that, in separate gigs, both broadened the festival’s musical palette and gave a sample of the shape of jazz to come, were father and son Giles and Alfie Perring from the neighbouring island of Jura.

Perring Snr’s trio’s blend of 1960s arts lab, bluesy swagger and technology-assisted melodic experimentation didn’t entirely convince, and the teenage Alfie’s trumpet and pocket trumpet playing sometimes showed more ambition than control. But his young sextet, bolstered by a hastily enlisted Simon Edwards on bass guitar, had plenty of promise, not least in drummer Steven Henderson and alto saxophonist Kirsty Duncan (from the Isle of Skye), as they gave good accounts of Charles Mingus, Benny Golson and Clifford Brown favourites.

© Rob Adams, 2009

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Jimmy Greene (Pablo Secca)

SOME MUSIC festivals are remembered for their settings, some for the weather, and the best ones for their content and a particular star performer. The 10th Black Bottle Islay Jazz Festival is likely to be looked back on with affection for all of these components.

The festival already has one of the most beautiful locations – looking out over Loch Indaal from the island’s newest venue, Port Mor, during the opening concert, it wasn’t unreasonable to feel that trumpeter Colin Steele and pianist David Milligan’s fine duo set was a bonus accompaniment.

Islay’s weekend as Scottish jazz’s HQ has also been looked upon reasonably kindly over years by the meteorological powers, although the brilliant sunshine that greeted the audience for bassist Mario Caribe’s celebration of his tenth consecutive festival appearance rather sabotaged the Brazilian’s otherwise atmospheric nonet, ‘Mists of Bunnahabhain’.

The most popular thread of conversation in the weekend’s immediate aftermath, however, focused on the Islay debut of Swedish pianist Jacob Karlzon. Karlzon, who has appeared in Scotland before with singer Viktoria Tolstoy, played three concerts over the weekend, at least two of which were sensational. I missed his quintet gig but his opening night duo with saxophonist Tommy Smith was a classic. The pair had never worked together before but that possibly added to the white heat of the music they created.

Karlzon has an attack reminiscent of McCoy Tyner in his early 1970s Milestone Records period. For all his thundering intensity and percussive torrents, though, there’s a deeply melodic flow of ideas at work in his playing and an emotional quality that puts the lie to Scandinavians’ supposedly cool approach.

With Smith, playing here at his most concise, lyrical and penetrating, he created music that danced deliberately, drew on gospel resources, veered into an orchestral dynamic range and yet remained conversational in the intimate surroundings of Ionad Chalium Chillie Ile.

Back in the same venue for a Sunday afternoon trio gig with bassist Calum Gourlay and drummer Stu Ritchie, Karlzon – if anything – trumped his previous contribution. Standards such as Miles Davis’s ‘Solar’ and Dave Brubeck’s ‘In Your Own Sweet Way’ were completely de-standardised, with Karlzon finding myriad subtle voicings, chord substitutions and variations on the original melodies as well as somehow managing to pack in a fantastic amount of hard-hammered detail without his solos ever sounding remotely cluttered.

Karlzon’s a terrific composer, too, and as was perhaps inevitable, given the shock that still surrounds his fellow Swede’s premature passing, he paid tribute to Esbjörn Svensson, capturing the lively spirit, rhythmical daring and winsome invention of Svensson’s trio. But it was his encore, a drop dead gorgeous reading of ‘Body & Soul’, so emotional that more than one audience member was spotted wiping away tears, that may prove to be his passport to deserved hero status across the wider Scottish jazz scene.

Another Islay debutant, Connecticut-born tenor saxophonist Jimmy Greene, also made a big impression. Fronting an opening night quintet with the ever-creative trumpeter Ryan Quigley in the ultra conducive Bruichladdich Hall, Green exuded a calm, genial authority, displaying a muscular tone and coolly logical solo building and presenting original compositions that registered instantly with the listener.

Saturday’s first-time visitors had slightly more mixed fortunes. In their own set, New York’s splendid Rosetta Trio brought both urban hustle and a sense of travelling towards far, big-skied horizons reminiscent of Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell as Liberty Ellman and Jamie Fox’s nimbly contrasting guitar styles interlocked with bassist and composer Stephan Crump’s rugged presence.

They proved equally adept accompanists to Crump’s partner, Jen Chapin, creating arrangements that consistently provided tense, attractive atmosphere behind her singing. Chapin’s rather coldly theatrical style of original street poetry didn’t always convince, though, and she was better when putting her own slant on songs by Radiohead, Van Morrison and particularly Stevie Wonder, whose ‘You Haven’t Done Nothin” proved as topical in this US election year as in its original guise.

Islay’s overall strength as a festival continues to lie in the island’s beauty and ambience and the relaxed, easy-going atmosphere that’s created, not without, it has to be said, some help from the sponsors and venues’, as it were, generosity of spirit.

It’s quite simply a great place to hear jazz, be it the aforementioned Steele and Milligan soulfully lamenting the passing of Miles Davis then turning a “contaminated strathspey” into something somewhere between Scottish ragtime and a Buster Keaton movie soundtrack, or guitarist Kevin Mackenzie leading a quartet that slips from samba to hip-hop with natural ease and a high level feelgood factor. And judging from the different accents and tongues audible amongst the audience, its reputation as a jazz venue is an increasingly international one.

© Rob Adams, 2008

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Jaleel Shaw

THERE’S A THEORY that if everyone who ever said they didn’t like jazz was to try the Black Bottle Islay Jazz Festival just once, the conversion rate would approach 100%.

After all, what’s not to like about spending a gloriously sunny Saturday afternoon at Bunnahabhain’s waterside distillery, taking in the spectacular view over to the neighbouring island of Jura and the odd thimbleful of the sponsor’s product to a soundtrack that’s high on melody and as heady as the whisky?

Or driving out to beautiful Portnahaven, home to fishermen, seals and a fine beach, where the local village hall offers Brazilian rhythms, home-baked cakes and … the odd thimbleful of the sponsor’s product?

Maybe it’s something to do with those thimblefuls. Whatever, over the festival’s eight years Islay has established a deserved reputation as one of the most conducive places to listen to jazz – and the musicians who create it confirm that the friendly, informal atmosphere that prevails at all the gigs brings out the best in them.

This year’s festival was not only the biggest – with twenty gigs in venues spread across the length and breadth of the island – it was also, arguably, the best so far.

It was certainly the most dramatic, with two of the scheduled musicians hospitalised days before, causing replacements to be hastily drafted in; another (absentee Brian Kellock) breaking a finger; and a tale of two car crashes which wrote off the cars involved. The musicians who were driving them mercifully escaped unharmed.

New York-based alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw totalled his car the day before he left for Scotland. The experience, he said, changed his whole outlook on life, and it certainly hadn’t impaired his musicianship as he went head to head with fellow saxophonist Julian Arguelles in an exciting quartet.

Later, his soulful sound and ability to build flowing, purposeful solos lit up his own quartet concert and a special New York duet with pianist David Berkman at the Columba Centre in Bowmore.

Berkman, who’s no newcomer to Islay, is an engaging, quick-witted improviser, as his own trio gig highlighted, and his meeting with Shaw produced high class music that was lyrical, atmospheric and exuberantly spontaneous.

Bassists Tom Lyne and Aidan O’Donnell, who were involved in the second car accident while returning home, were the respective heartbeats of the two bands who wowed Saturday’s Bunnahabhain audience, and doubtless listeners to BBC Radio 3’s Jazz Line-Up, which was going out live from Islay.

Lyne’s unfussy, warm playing alongside Tom Bancroft’s apt and witty drumming gives pianist David Milligan’s trio a rhythmical hallmark that’s as instantly recognisable as Milligan’s concise phrasing and gently insistent touch. His funky, down-home ‘Comfort Zone’, which got several airings over the weekend, must be a leading candidate for the festival’s hit tune, although there’s a genuine consistency to the trio’s repertoire.

Milligan is also in the running for the festival’s hit solo award after a couple of titanic contributions to Stramash’s set. Colin Steele’s folk-jazz ten piece fielded no fewer than four debutants, but the trumpeter had chosen well and newcomers and band regulars alike played his Islay-inspired compositions with sensitivity, attention to detail and great gusto to produce a right old shindig.

The weekend’s heroic deputy award can have only one winner, Skye-based saxophonist Nigel Hitchcock. When saxophone quartet Brass Jaw’s tenorist, Brian Molley, took ill on Thursday, Hitchcock received an SOS call. He flew into Islay on Sunday and without having seen a dot of the quartet’s intricate and – to say the least – expansive arrangements, he sight-read their entire performance.

Judging from his amiable demeanour, it was all in a day’s work for the vastly experienced Hitchcock. Even so, the impromptu nature of his contribution – underlined by him pointing to a section of his part, asking “what happens here?”, and finding out it was his solo – made it all the more impressive. He played the solo in question – and others – with wonderful brio and an absolute understanding of the music’s structure.

For sheer versatility, Paul Harrison would take some beating. The pianist answered guitarist Martin Taylor’s call after Taylor’s planned guest, accordionist Jack Emblow, had to cancel through illness.

Having acquitted himself superbly in Taylor’s Bruichladdich Hall return, Harrison then went on to play his more customary role as keyboards captain of the zany, high-energy and adventurous electro-jazz trio Trianglehead. He then reverted to acoustic piano in the relaxed, swinging rhythm section accompanying American tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton’s popular first Islay appearance.

Such adaptability typifies the festival as a whole and is, of course, a reflection on island life. No-one sticks for a lift from one gig to another. There’s a real feeling of togetherness among complete strangers, and tips on how to make the most of your stay on Islay, as well as at the jazz festival, are as readily available as those thimblefuls of Black Bottle which greet everyone on arrival at each venue.

No wonder the first thing regulars do after the final concert is mark the dates for the next Islay Jazz Festival in their diaries. To save you asking, they are 14-16 September, 2007.

© Rob Adams, 2006

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Arild Andersen.

QUEUES FORMING outside every concert told their own story. In its seventh year, the Black Bottle Islay Jazz Festival is surely now firmly established as Scotland’s most popular small-scale jazz event.

Much of the queuing was caused by the high uptake of weekender tickets, guaranteeing near capacity attendances in the island’s mostly modest-sized venues before the doors opened. But even in larger spaces such as Bunnahabhain Distillery’s beautifully located storage shed, the sight of people being shoehorned in soon became familiar.

There is, of course, a feeling – backed up by a shortage of available overnight accommodation and fully booked ferries – that almost the entire festival, audiences as well as musicians, is now being imported from the mainland. Indeed, if you want to take in the eighth edition – dates have already been announced as September 15-17, 2006 – you might be advised to get a room booked pronto.

Some of the homespun charm of the festival’s early years may have been lost as a result of this. But there’s still something special about being allowed into Islay House’s grand hallway to hear piano and clarsach duo Bachue adding jazz trumpet to the Doric ballad tradition, courtesy of special guest Colin Steele, or trekking out to Portnahaven, to the Atlantic’s edge, to hear international class jazz by pianist Brian Kellock’s trio on a Saturday lunchtime. Here, musicians and audiences alike fortified themselves for the long day ahead with home-baked scones and cakes during the interval. Very Village Vanguard, that.

Islay actually has its own Village Vanguard in the unassuming Bruichladdich Hall. Drive past it during the day and that’s exactly what you’ll do – drive past it without noticing it. It’s not exactly an architectural wonder of the world inside, either. Yet during every jazz festival it inspires musicians to play at the top of their game. This year it was Colin Steele’s turn. Playing to a loudly receptive audience, the trumpeter and his quintet, including recent recruit, saxophonist Konrad Wiszniewski, and the marvellously inventive pianist David Milligan, turned on the style.

Wiszniewski brings a hunger as well as improvising accomplishment to Steele’s Scottish-accented compositions, including the very apt ‘Paps of Jura’, composed on the ferry en route to last year’s festival, and it’ll be interesting, to say the least, to hear how the group develops with him aboard.

Whether Moishe’s Bagel should be filed under jazz is a matter of some debate – they swing and they improvise, so that’s qualification enough for me.

If there was a fly in the ointment this time around, it was in the programming of singer Tina May in Bruichladdich simultaneously with Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen and saxophonist Tommy Smith’s duo concert in the Round Church in Bowmore on Saturday.

It didn’t help that your reviewer drove round to catch the second half of May’s gig only to find the venue door jammed shut – possibly the first example ever of Islay being inhospitable. But a quick drive back to Bowmore granted the reward of hearing Andersen and Smith enlarging upon their first set’s variety.

Andersen’s beautiful tone and amazing dexterity, allied to a mastery of technology, produce a fabulous array of sounds with no hint of gratuitous novelty-seeking. His ‘Independency Suite’, which occupied the first half, found him and Smith creating almost orchestral variations on Nordic themes with clever use of rhythmical echo effects.

If it sounded a little tentative in places – this was only the duo’s second performance of it – there was nothing tentative about their second set. Full of good natured challenges, spontaneous invention, brilliantly agile playing of folk dances – from Arabic forms to reels – and sheer musical expression, this was artistry of a high order.

The final day’s programme might have been sub-headed ‘Whisky on a Sunday’ with a lunchtime farewell from the New Zealand-bound John Rae at Ardbeg followed by a late afternoon tribute to Charlie Parker by alto saxophonist Martin Kershaw at Laphroaig Distillery. Rae’s New Jazz featured the drummer in Art Blakey’s role as the (slightly) elder statesman leading a young band playing accessible, melodic numbers all composed by band members.

The pick of these were saxophonist Paul Towndrow’s brisk, grooving ‘Interjection’ and Rae’s own New Orleans-flavoured ‘Smelly Oxters’, a typical Rae juxtaposition of quality writing with a less than reverent dedication to a well-known but unnamed saxophonist. Rae has hinted that his move to the Antipodes may not be permanent, but if it is, he’ll leave a massive gap in the Scottish jazz scene.

Whether Moishe’s Bagel should be filed under jazz is a matter of some debate – they swing and they improvise, so that’s qualification enough for me. But there was no doubting their contribution to Islay. If ever a finale was aptly promoted as rip-roaring, it was the Bagel’s parting blast of rollicking Balkan dance music, emotive Sephardic blues and dramatic violin melodies. Not quite a party – the audience was probably too jiggered to dance – but an emphatically joyous coda all the same to an invigorating weekend.

© Rob Adams, 2005

ISLAY may seem an unlikely location for one of Scotland’s best jazz festivals, but that is exactly what has been created over the past six years on an island better known for its distilleries – all seven of them – and its scenery and wildlife than its arts scene.

Donnie McCaslin blows hard at Gruinart

Stuart Todd of Islay Arts Association explains elsewhere  on the site how the event got underway in 1999, in association with jazz promoters Assembly Direct. It has grown both in scope and quality since then, but remains satisfyingly self-contained and manageable. Occasional tough decisions have to be taken when events clash, but for the most part the size and choice on offer is about right.

The venues have an improvised feel to them, but that is all part of the charm, and jazz sounds just as good in the RSPB Centre at Gruinart as it does in a club or concert hall – and Gruinart, like Portnahaven, has the added attraction of excellent home baking (the local SWRI view the lunchtime concert at Portnahaven as their principal fund-raising event in the year, and they certainly shifted mounds of sandwiches and cakes at a bargain £2.50 per plateful).

Islay itself is one of the stars of the show, even in a weekend where wind and rain dominated the weather scene. The blind bends and undulations of the snaking single track road out to Bunnahabhain Distillery sticks in the mind for reasons both good and bad, but the views all over the island added value to an already memorable experience.

Appropriately enough, the festival has gone hand in hand from the outset with the main local industry – or should that be art? Black Bottle are the overall sponsors of the event, and samples of their wares were dispensed gratis at every gig, while both Bunnahabhain and Ardbeg Distillery hosted concerts.

“The SNJO once again dispatched this difficult but absorbing music in impeccable fashion, and the audience responded enthusiastically to what is a challenging programme even for hard-core jazz fans.”

The subsequent gales and downpours of the weekend did little to dampen the enthusiasm of either the musicians or the generally capacity audiences around the venues, and hiccups like missed ferries and the arrival of a fun fair outside the hall destined for the festival’s main concert were adroitly dealt with – in the latter case, by switching the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s Saturday evening concert from Port Ellen to Bowmore.

The orchestra played Ellington and Mingus on their last visit to the festival, but this year chose the uncompromising programme of ten specially commissioned “re-compositions” of the music of Thelonious Monk they premiered at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival in August. Tommy Smith had shuffled the running order and tightened up one or two of the pieces, but the principal change for this concert was the addition of two American guests, tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin and alto saxophonist Jesse Davis.

Their presence gave the SNJO’s saxophone soloists a lean evening, but also brought a new twist to the music, while the contrast in styles between McCaslin’s more contemporary approach and Davis’s bop-rooted style added its own fascinating dimension to proceedings, especially on tunes like Joe Locke’s arrangement of ‘Evidence’ and Tim Garland’s ‘Epistrophy’, where both were featured.

The SNJO once again dispatched this difficult but absorbing music in impeccable fashion, and the audience responded enthusiastically to what is a challenging programme even for hard-core jazz fans. Tommy disagrees, but I still feel the programme would benefit from at least a couple of Monk’s own arrangements as a reference point for the new departures. Great concert, though, and all the more admirable given that the band had a rough journey and ferry crossing earlier in the day.

“The foursome provided the highlight of the festival for me in a remarkable, massively energised version of Joe Henderson’s ‘Inner Urge’, a wonderful (near) ending to what had been a notably imaginative trio performance.”

He improvises in very logical fashion, using motifs and ingenious techniques of repetition and variation to build the intensity and develop the flow of his solos. By contrast, Jesse Davis took a more traditionally bop-oriented approach to melodic and harmonic development in his fiery set at an otherwise chilly Bunnahabhain Distillery on Saturday afternoon. The altoist stayed mainly in the realm of familiar standards and classic jazz tunes, culminating in a burning version of ‘Cherokee’, and received superb support from another excellent home-based rhythm section, featuring pianist Paul Harrison, bassist Mario Caribe and John Rae.

The timing and geographical distribution of the Saturday lunchtime gigs provided the chance to catch a set by the McKenzie Medbøe quartet at Islay House, over looked by stag’s heads and antlers. Trombonist Chris Grieve added to the trio featured in the welcome gig at Port Charlotte, and the band made attractive play of the unconventional sounds and textures of their instrumental line-up.

A dash down to Portnahaven then allowed me to catch the second set from saxophonist Laura MacDonald, playing a set built around the music of Cole Porter with Steve Hamilton, Aidan O’Donnell and John Blease. As well as playing in her usual inventive fashion on alto saxophone, she sang ‘Night and Day’ (only the second time I have heard her sing, but she has a fine voice), and was joined by Donnie McCaslin on tenor saxophone in a scintillating version of ‘Love for Sale’ and ‘Just One of Those Things’.

McCaslin also sat in on the last two tunes of tenor saxophonist Julian Arguelles’s set at the RSPB Centre at Gruinart on Sunday lunchtime, with O’Donnell and Blease maintaining the high standard they achieved all weekend. The foursome provided the highlight of the festival for me in a remarkable, massively energised version of Joe Henderson’s ‘Inner Urge’, a wonderful (near) ending to what had been a notably imaginative trio performance.

“The plethora of youthful talent around the festival did not mean the exclusion of more senior figures.”

Singer Cathie Rae also performed at the Columba centre on Sunday afternoon, but I was only able to catch a short opening set (brought to a premature halt to allow a reorganisation of seating for the overflow crowd). The four standards she did get through were dispatched in accomplished fashion, and she continues to develop as a fine interpreter of the classic jazz repertoire (although she is not confined solely to it).

The plethora of youthful talent around the festival did not mean the exclusion of more senior figures. I was unable to hear singer Tam White’s gig with his Shoestring Band at Bruichladdich on Saturday, but I did catch the closing concert featuring the Scottish All-Stars at the Machrie Hotel on Sunday night.

The band are dedicated to recalling the triumphs of an earlier generation of Scottish jazz stars from the era of Sandy Brown, Alex Welsh and the Clyde Valley Stompers, and features ex-members of that latter band, including the wonderful clarinet playing of Forrie Cairns and singer Fionna Duncan. Trumpeter Lenny Herd and trombonist Dave Bachelor make up the front line, with Tom Finlay (standing in for Brian Kellock) on piano, Ronnie Rae in bass, and John Rae on drums.

The All-Stars are not simply in the business of recycling well-worn material. They tackle the warhorses of the jazz repertoire with vigour and a fresh approach that breathes new life into tunes that have been bashed out at a zillion trad sessions, but without abandoning the qualities that made this music great in the first place. A difficult conjuring trick, and one they pulled off with aplomb.

Islay an unlikely location for a jazz festival? Don’t you believe it.

© Kenny Mathieson, 2004

The beautiful island of Islay is famous for several things, including its whisky, but STUART TODD explains how it also came to have one of the most attractive jazz festivals in Scotland
 

“WE GOT THIS CALL from Islay,” the story goes, “where they wanted advice on groups for a jazz night.  We said, why don’t you have a festival? – and they did.”  So goes the folklore about the beginnings of the Islay Jazz Festival, now the biggest non-urban jazz festival in Scotland.  And it is true – if you build in a year and a half of planning and a long search for the perfect sponsor.

Taking the calls were Fiona Alexander and Roger Spence of Assembly Direct, the Leith-based organisation who are Scotland’s largest jazz promoters, running the Edinburgh and Dundee jazz festivals, and several other festivals (including co-promoting the Nairn Jazz Festival with Ken Ramage), tours, concerts and club dates.

The man making the call was me – Stuart Todd of Islay Arts Association, local promoters on the inner Hebridean island well known for its whiskies and wildlife. Within our resources, the IAA is a multi-arts promoter.  Since 1985, with the vital support of the Scottish Arts Council and a very sympathetic Charitable Trust, we have put on 8 – 10 presentations a year.

The aim is for a spectrum of performing arts which include drama, dance, literature, kids’ shows and of course, music of various sorts.  In the early 90s we presented a jazz event which was well received by a local audience of about 60, good for an island population of under 3500.  Fast forward a few years and the time seemed right for more jazz.  But though several of our committee are jazz fans we felt we needed specialist help, so the call was made to Leith.

Coincidentally Assembly Direct were looking to seed a new Scottish festival so the planning began.  Although an island two hours by ferry from the west coast mainland seemed to some an unlikely option, those involved kept faith.  The turning point came when the perfect sponsor agreed to come on board;  Black Bottle, the number two selling Scotch whisky whose marketing centres on quality blends, including whiskies from all seven of Islay’s single malt distilleries.

The first Black Bottle Islay Jazz Festival set the pattern in 1999;  a September weekend with events running from Friday night through to Sunday night, in a wide variety of venues all across the island.  International artists are always part of the programme, but the backbone is a range of great Scottish players – the six years of the festival has interestingly corresponded with a particular flourishing of the Scottish jazz scene. 

“All the venues are chosen to present the music in situations that are unusual and inspiring.”

These musicians would always include Scottish players who have become international stars as well as younger artists whose careers haven’t yet taken them overseas.  The 2004 programme, for instance, has among others a return visit by the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra under Tommy Smith, the young lions of Les Ecossais, and the more mature talents of the Scottish Jazz All Stars.

Crossing oceans are musicians from Australia, Iceland and the USA; from New Orleans Jesse Davis will show why he is considered one of the world’s top alto saxophonists; and from New York comes the startling tenor sax of Donnie McCaslin.

The island’s local talent gets well displayed too.  Gaelic song is the art form in which Islay excels, but one fine singer made the jump a decade ago from her roots music to also become a top class jazz and blues vocalist.  Sheena Swanson will this year perform a selection of songs made famous by Billie Holiday in a quartet with Islay colleague Brian Palmer on drums, Brazilian bassist Mario Caribe and – back from Berklee – ace pianist Paul Harrison.  The two “Ileachs” then move from this grouping to join Islay’s own raunchy blues band, 95° Proof.

More than a dozen venues are regularly used, and many reckon this a big attraction.  They include village halls, hotels, the high-tech Columba Centre, a big country house, the R.S.P.B. visitor centre and, naturally, distilleries.  Ardbeg and Bruichladdich regularly feature and a big event in Bunnahabhainn has become a noteworthy fixture.  This single malt distillery – under the same ownership as the Black Bottle brand – makes a superb setting with views across the Sound of Jura.  All the venues are chosen to present the music in situations that are unusual and inspiring.

Audiences, travelling around these concerts over the weekend, split about 3:2 visitors to locals, which means a substantial benefit to the local economy.  Nearly 100 dedicated jazz fans, plus nearly 50 musicians and a handful of journalists make an input into the islands’ tourist industry, just after the main season.

As well as the life-giving commercial sponsorship, funding has included help from A.I.E., Argyll and Bute Council and the Scottish Arts Council, whose long-term backing is vital to both Assembly Direct and Islay Arts.

If I am to summarise the progress of the festival, I would say that there are probably half a dozen components which have come together in its success.  The great music, obviously.  The perfect sponsor (and their free drams at many of the events!).  The different skills of the two promoters – Assembly Direct’s huge knowledge and experience of the jazz scene and our knowledge of local people, venues, resources and so on.  The composition of the audiences, with visitors mixing happily with locals.  And finally Islay itself – a beautifully varied island that every September is itself one of the stars of the Festival.

The Islay Jazz Festival 2004 runs from 10-12 September.
 
© Stuart Todd, 2004

THE BLACK BOTTLE Islay Jazz Festival recorded another instalment of its remarkable success story at the weekend, with its busiest programme to date, culminating with a spectacular premiere of a new work by Edinburgh-based drummer John Rae which will live long in the memories of all those who were present.

Featuring initially Rae’s jazz-folk group Celtic Feet expanded into a seventeen-piece orchestra – Big Feet – the music ranged and raged between Scottish traditional dance measures, marauding grooves and anarchic blowing.

The atmosphere this boisterous mob created in Port Ellen’s Ramsay Hall was already celebratory. But when the Islay Pipe Band joined in and Rae’s arrangements pushed both jazz and traditional music to their respective boundaries, the excitement became so electric that the only way to get the musicians offstage was to have the pipe band lead them all out into the street.

It was a fitting way to end a weekend that reinforced Islay’s reputation for high quality music, much of it played in makeshift, startlingly unusual or simply unassuming venues.

Three of the island’s seven distilleries hosted concerts. Trumpeter Colin Steele’s quintet played a wonderfully composed and orchestrated Saturday afternoon concert in Bunnahabhain. American cornettist Warren Vache’s ‘hair of the dog’ Sunday lunchtime session at Ardbeg delivered superbly eloquent standards as well as soothing hangovers (almost). And Bruichladdich rocked to Rumba Caliente’s Cuban sounds on Saturday evening.

Earlier on Saturday, just along the waterfront, Carol Kidd continued Bruichladdich Hall’s festival tradition of hosting concerts that would grace much more prestigious venues. Kidd was simply superb, alternating – as is her way – between mischievous party animal and world class interpreter of ballads, swing numbers and R&B classics.

Few festivals anywhere offer opportunities of hearing music in settings such as the impressive Islay House or the beautiful fishing village of Portnahaven. Singer Niki King and her ever-apposite accompanist, guitarist Marcus Ford, charmed audiences in both locations.

Islay’s newest venue, Ionad Chalium Chille Ile, was the rather more conventional location for a fine welcoming concert, featuring pianist David Patrick, bassist Mario Caribe and Islay’s own Brian Palmer (drums), and a very assured Saturday lunchtime session by alto saxophonist Paul Towndrow’s youthful quartet.

It also had its eccentric moments, though, as New York-based pianist David Berkman, a musician of no little experience and a raconteur of TV chat show host potential, established a career first of having to abandon a tune due to a coughing fit. His classy, imaginative playing, in duets and a trio with saxophonist Julian Arguelles and trumpeter Colin Steele, soon restored normal service, though.

Islay seems to attract such novelties. Friday’s first ever appearance on the island by the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra was only able to continue with the glow of Bowmore Hall’s wall-mounted heaters allowing the musicians to read their parts in the absence of stage lighting.

Once again, however, the music – Duke Ellington’s conciseness contrasting with Charles Mingus’ rampaging full bloodedness – transcended any novelty value as the orchestra gave another illustration of Tommy Smith’s diligent and astute musical directorship.

© Rob Adams, 2003