'More than 470 jazz courses on planet and now we have one to be proud of'

Published on Tuesday 6 October 2009 18:53

MUSICAL history was made on Monday as Scotland's first full-time conservatory-level jazz course got underway at Glasgow's Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

It may have started with what the course director, saxophonist Tommy Smith, describes somewhat bemusingly as a "jazz piano for non-pianists" class, and with Smith himself out of the country, but the start of term was a significant – and many would say long overdue – milestone for the development of jazz in Scotland.

Speaking from Oslo airport, while touring Europe in his award-winning collaboration with Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen and Italian drummer Paolo Vinaccia, Smith expressed his delight at the start of the course.

He also explained good humouredly that the piano-for-non-pianists session was to assist the first intake of six students – a trumpeter, two saxophonists, a bassist, a drummer and, yes, one pianist – in their understanding of composition and harmony.

Strictly speaking, the new jazz programme blasted off in style last Friday, at a concert at the RSAMD when the students played in the foyer and the new faculty's line-up of tutors – Smith, who will teach the sax students, plus pianist Harrison, Ryan Quigley (trumpet), Chris Grieve (trombone), Kevin Mackenzie (guitar), bassist Mario Caribe and drummer Alyn Cosker – took the stage to give a packed audience no room for doubt at the stellar level of jazz expertise being passed on at the RSAMD.

And not before time, remarks Smith, pointing out that, despite its vigorously creative jazz scene of recent years, Scotland has now only just got its first full-time jazz teaching facility. Smith himself knows the benefits of a dedicated jazz education, having left his native Edinburgh at 16 for Boston's Berklee College, which has been teaching jazz since 1945.

Not that there haven't been various jazz teaching initiatives here over the years – Strathclyde University's Applied Music Course has produced a string of notable jazzers, while back in the 1990s, Smith and Bobby Wishart, established the Scottish Jazz Institute. "But the institute was only 24 days a year, on Saturdays," says Smith.

In fact, he adds, as a 12-year-old, he had joined other aspiring and now established Scottish jazz names such as Tom and Phil Bancroft, John Rae and Kevin Mackenzie at Saturday morning classes led at Edinburgh's Broughton High School by the late Gordon Cruickshank.

The dedicated jazz player, however, requires total immersion in the music, and Smith comes out with a lengthy litany of the many Scottish jazzers who have left the country to further their musical education at colleges south of the Border or further afield to Smith's own alma mater, Berklee. Quite apart from the benefits of teaching by top exponents, Smith emphasises the importance of the "meeting of like-minded people" enabled by a full-time jazz education establishment: in four years, he adds, the RSAMD's six students will have swelled to 24, "so there will be a bigger buzz about the place. It's such a thrilling thing to happen."

Smith isn't the only one to be thrilled at these developments at the RSAMD, which has also just introduced a dance course for the first time in its 162-year-history, in a resurgence of positivism following a bitter period of cutbacks. The college's principal, classical trumpeter John Wallace, says: "To have Tommy Smith, one of the all-time greats, heading up jazz at the RSAMD fulfils a long-time dream for me."

"We've now joined Poland and all the other countries which have one full-time jazz school," laughs Smith. "Germany has 16, Norway has six … there are more than 470 full-time jazz courses on the planet, and now we have one, and we can be proud of that."

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