Jazz review: Scottish National Jazz Orchestra Plays Wayne Shorter

Published on Sunday 13 September 2009 22:09

QUEEN'S HALL, EDINBURGH *****

TOMMY Smith and the SNJO keep delivering. Their foray into saxophonist Wayne Shorter's brilliant and idiosyncratic repertoire with ten newly commissioned and notably diverse arrangements was another triumph.

One of the great fascinations in this kind of project is the multi-faceted nature of the listening experience, here layering Shorter's compositions with the new arranger's transforming vision and the creative input of the musicians.

Smith's trump card was to feature vibraphone maestro Gary Burton as guest soloist. Although he has no track record in Shorter's music, he is one of the truly great improvisers in jazz, and his lucid, penetrating style proved perfectly matched to the rather cerebral melodic and harmonic dimensions of Shorter's musical mind. The players of the SNJO made their own telling contributions, both in their ensemble playing and in soloing.

They concentrated on compositions from the 1960s, when Shorter led his own classic sessions for Blue Note and was a key member of the seminal Miles Davis Quintet.

That association furnished two classics here, Florian Ross's Nefertiti and Mike Gibbs' magnificent setting of ESP.

Pino Jodice's Speak No Evil, Christian Jacob's This Is For Albert, Fred Sturm's Yes Or No and Issie Barrett's Witch Hunt all impressed with very different approaches.

Joe Locke's El Gaucho and Manu Pekar's Footprints brought out the earthier side of Shorter's music, and Michael Abene's Infant Eyes and Geoffrey Keezer's Virgo Rising underlined his gorgeous way with a ballad.