Stellar line-up ready to help Fab Four 70th birthday tribute go with a swing

Published on Tuesday 5 October 2010 12:03

HOW DO you arrange such revered material as Beatles songs for an orchestra and jazz big band without either losing the essence that made the originals so enduringly distinctive, or ending up with some bland MOR accommodation?

That's the challenge facing the widely acclaimed (and extremely busy) Glasgow-based jazz trumpeter and band-leader Ryan Quigley and the Los Angeles-based Irish composer and pianist Brian Byrne, as they prepare for a one-off charity extravaganza at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall this Friday, Swinging the Beatles.

On the eve of what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday - had the most rebellious and acerbically witty of the Fab Four not been gunned down by a disturbed fan outside his New York apartment in 1980, - Quigley and Byrne (old friends since they were both students at the Royal Scottish Academy of music and Drama during the mid-90s) have assembled the a star-studded bill of musicians and singers to reinterpret the Beatles canon. Proceeds will go to Yorkhill Children's Foundation, which provides state-of-the-art medical equipment for the Glasgow hospital.

So far as tribute bands go, this is a formidable one. Backed by Quigley's own big band, as well as a 16-piece string orchestra, the singers include such notable jazz names as Jacqui Dankworth, Carol Kidd and Todd Gordon, as well as such Scottish rock and folk names as Del Amitri frontman Justin Currie, Sandi Thom, Horse, Eddi Reader and Gaelic songstress Julie Fowlis.

"I'm a massive Beatles fan," says the 33-year-old Derry-born Quigley. "And I think that what I try and do and what Brian does as well is to try and capture the spirit of the original - and a lot of the Beatles stuff is very forward-looking and innovative for its time - and certainly not dumbing it down to make it middle of the road.

"You take inspiration from what they did, and while there will be a couple of arrangements that haven't changed too much, others have been radically changed."

It's rocker Currie, who toured with Quigley's Big Band earlier this year, who will handle some of the Beatles' more psychedelic offerings - Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds, Strawberry Fields Forever, and Tomorrow Never Knows. How the players will deal with the last, a song that erupted from the Revolver album as a wondrous gallimaufry of jumbled tape loops and reversed guitar solos, remains to be seen.

In contrast, jazzer Carol Kidd will be applying her consummate ballad skills to Yesterday, while Todd Gordon (whose Jazz International agency is behind the concert) will be swinging the up-tempo Can't Buy Me Love.Singer-songwriter Sandi Thom, currently re-inventing herself as a blues chanteuse, will handle one of the Beatles' lesser known but poignantly gentle numbers, In My Life, while, slipping into folk mode Julie Fowlis will perform the winsome Gaelic version of Blackbird she has been singing for some time now.

Arrangements will be split between Quigley's and some which Byrne wrote two years ago for a Dublin Swinging With the Beatles event with the RTE Concert Orchestra, though they have been "customised" for the Glasgow event.

Byrne has arranged for such diverse artists as Bono, Alanis Morissette, Bob Geldof and Jamie Cullum. Quigley himself is no stranger to collaborations: as well as playing in Byrne's Irish concerts, he wrote arrangements for Sharleen Spiteri and the BBC concert orchestra last year. As lead trumpet of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra he's also contributed an arrangement for next month's SNJO tour with Norwegian bass star Arild Andersen. In the meantime, he is focusing on Friday night - with a little help from his friends.

• For further details, see www.glasgowconcerthalls.com and www.ryanquigleybigband.com