Interview: Landmark birthday finds Paul Towndrow ready to experiment

“The main thing about getting a little older is that I don’t really quantify my career any more in terms of goals or ambitions,” says the Glasgow-based alto saxophonist, looking back from this four-decade vantage point. As a teenager, he recalls, “I used to write out goals on a piece of paper. Not many of the great experiences I’ve had so far as a musician have been directly related to specific goals I’ve set. They’re always the surprises, things that have simply happened.”

The aspiring list-maker may not have envisaged that one day he’d be performing while dressed as a chicken – the scenario when I first interviewed him a decade or so ago, and he was appearing with drummer-educator Tom Bancroft’s riotous children’s show, Kidsamonium. Not that that stage of his career was confined to funky poultry. The same year saw him release his fine Six By Six sextet album while 2009’s Newology prompted one leading London jazz commentator to remark that Towndrow’s bands “confirm the contemporary Scottish scene’s membership of the world league”.

Apart from recording five albums under his own name, playing in the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and performing with such improbably diverse names as the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Capercaillie and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Towndrow has steered some large-ensemble projects in recent years. Pro-Am, commissioned for Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games programme in 2014, involved both professional and amateur big bands, while last August saw his cross-cultural fusion piece, Deepening the River, performed by his Keywork Orchestra of jazz, Scottish traditional and Indian musicians. It will be repeated on 18 January during Celtic Connections and recorded a couple of days later.

It was his friend, trumpeter Ryan Quigley, who suggested revisiting the famous recordings Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown made in the Fifties with a string orchestra. “We discovered that a lot of the Parker arrangements had surfaced, including some never performed by him, live or in a studio,” he says.

The project had its premiere in 2014. For a later performance, in Glasgow’s Merchant’s House early this year, Towndrow performed some of the previously unissued arrangements. “I think,” he laughs, “we discovered some of the reasons why Charlie Parker didn’t include them. They’re very challenging but very beautiful.”

Things have evolved since then: “While Parker never recorded any of his own compositions with strings, I’ve arranged strings for some of his tunes and also one or two of my own compositions.”

Tonight’s rhythm section comprises Steve Hamilton on piano, Euan Burton on bass and John Lowrie on drums: “But because it’s a birthday concert I’ve also arranged for a number of guests, including Alyn Cosker on drums, and a few surprises as well.”

And it’s not just the jazzers who’ll be using these arrangements as a platform for improvisation: led by Greg Lawson, director of the mighty GRIT orchestra, the string players are also given their share of breaks.

As well as the Parker project and reprising Deepening the River, Towndrow hopes to resume his duo with pianist Steve Hamilton, which resulted in an acclaimed album, We Shine in the Sun, two years ago.

All this is over and above his considerable teaching work, both on the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s jazz course and through his continuing involvement in the community-based Byres Road Big Band. In the meantime, he says, “my strategy is to keep working hard and be reactive to the cultural fabric of where I am, which is central Scotland, and contribute to it in a way that represents quality but is also honest as well as enjoyable.” n

Paul Towndrow at 40 is at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall’s City of Music Studio, 15 December at 8:30pm, followed by a late-night jam session at 10:45pm. See www.glasgowconcerthalls.com