Jazz review: NYJOS Collective

Published on Thursday 3 September 2009 18:56

NYJOS COLLECTIVE *** ONETOUCH THEATRE, EDEN COURT, INVERNESS

THE NYJOS Collective is a nine-piece unit featuring the most advanced players from the full National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland, playing an imaginative repertoire that features on a new CD, for which this was one of three launch concerts.

Malcolm Edmonstone and Andrew Bain, the joint directors, had clearly put in a lot of work with the group. The players acquitted themselves well in a challenging programme, albeit with a rather nervy opening in the first couple of tunes – Clifford Brown's classic Joy Spring and the first of three evocative compositions by Kenny Wheeler, Introduction To No Particular Song.

If they lacked full conviction and accuracy in that early stage, they quickly warmed to the task. Bain had explained that one of their aims with NYJOS was to foster a higher level of improvisational skills, and several of the players revealed precisely that, with tenor saxophonist Joe Wright and bass player Andrew Robb obvious stand-outs.

Pianist Peter Johnstone led a fine rhythm section, with Robb and drummer Andrew Silk, and the horn line-up featured alto saxophonist Ruaridh Pattison alongside Wright, brothers James and Edward Marr on trumpet and flugelhorn, and trombonists Richard Foote and Kieran McLeod.

Both McLeod and Wright supplied compositions to a set list that also featured Dave Holland's Homecoming, Victor Feldman's Seven Steps To Heaven, Wheeler's Gentle Piece and Mark Time, and Herbie Hancock's grooving arrangement of Prince's Thieves in the Temple. Catch them at The Lot in Edinburgh tonight.