John Kenny: the man who reversed the slide of the trombone for all time

Published on Tuesday 1 December 2009 18:09

FROM the spine-tingling blare of the carnyx, a 2,000-year-old Celtic war horn, to the jazz sounds of Thad Jones or Duke Ellington, or the avant-garde "classical" music of Ligeti or Berio may seem a quantum leap, historically, stylistically and culturally, but they're all grist to the mill for trombonist and blower of exotic brass John Kenny.

The past few days have seen the Edinburgh-based musician giving a solo recital at the Barbican in London (following his regular teaching duties at the city's Guildhall School of Music) then take part in Monday's patron saint's day celebrations in St Andrews by playing the carnyx in the multi-media production Wildfire.

Earlier in November he drove round the UK, car crammed with instruments, giving performances including his lecture recital Mouthpiece of the Gods, which illustrates ancient instruments from sackbut to didgeridoo. Next Wednesday, however, he moves into jazz mode when he appears at Edinburgh's Jazz Bar with his group Red Shift, boasting a front line of no less than five trombones.

Playing their own compositions as well as standards by such masters of jazz trombone as Kai Winding and Mark Nightingale, and premiering a suite of tunes written for them by drummer and composer Tony Faulkner, Red Shift is a redoubtable showcase for an instrument which tends not to enjoy the cachet associated with the sax or trumpet as a jazz lead instrument, although Kenny doesn't necessarily agree. "The trombone has always been there," he says, "fighting its own corner and is still one of the first instruments of jazz.

"When you look at the great jazz composers and arrangers – Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Basie, Ellington, the absolute bedrock of the band is the trombone."

Kenny formed the band last year: "I'd wanted to pull together a group like this for many years, but there was never really a critical mass of trombone players who had the right breadth of skills until comparatively recently."

Red Shift assembles some of the leading players on the Scottish scene – Rick Taylor, Chris Grieve, Phil O'Malley, Kenny himself and his 21-year-old son, Patrick – driven by a rhythm section which could count as a jazz trio in its own right: pianist Chick Lyall, drummer Tom Bancroft and Tom Lyne on bass.

Kenny describes the trombone, an instrument of ancient pedigree, as "the most vocal-sounding of all wind instruments. And, in the classical sector, there's been a renaissance of writing for it. When I was a student in the 1970s it was almost inconceivable that anybody could make a serious living as a concert soloist on trombone, but that's basically what I've done all my professional life."

His predilection for some of the more arcane, not to say antique, wind instruments takes on board everything from alphorn to conch shell. In the early 1990s, however, a significant milestone in his career came with the invitation to join a team, under the aegis of National Museums Scotland and on the initiative of the musicologist John Purser, who were reconstructing the carnyx, the formidable boar-headed Celtic war horn, based on the remains of one found in a Banffshire peat bog in the 19th century.

Kenny became the first person to sound a carnyx in two millennia and has gone on to integrate its roaring, whooping bellow into many of his performances, including his own Voice of the Carnyx, a solo work combining the Iron Age instrument with electronics.

"There's no doubt that it has enriched my life enormously," says Kenny of the instrument. "It's enabled me to get to places where other players don't go."

The carnyx is unlikely to rear its hoary head at Red Shift's Jazz Bar gig next week, however – just those five trombones, giving distinct, brazen voice of their own.

&#149 For further details, see www.thejazzbar.co.uk and www.carnyxscotland.co.uk