SNJO returns to Aberdeen for Where Rivers Meet performance
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The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra (SNJO) returns to Aberdeen to play at Queen’s Cross Church on Friday, September 30 as part of the opening tour of its latest concert season.
It marks a return to a venue that before the Covid pandemic, the orchestra visited often and for which its founder-director, saxophonist Tommy Smith retains strong affections.
“We played three spring concerts over consecutive years – 2018 to 2020 - that featured works we felt were ideally suited to the church,” says Smith.
“One of them, where we played the music of the underappreciated pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams, was particularly special and it was unfortunate, if obviously understandable, that the sequence was interrupted.
"We’re looking forward to being back in The Sanctuary as it’s a really special place to play and will lend itself well to the music we’ll be presenting.”
The concert will feature the music from the orchestra’s latest recording, Where Rivers Meet, which was a project that Smith was able to bring to fruition last year despite the limitations imposed by Coronavirus.
“Where Rivers Meet consists of four specially orchestrated suites of music, each dedicated to one of four saxophone heroes from the 1960s,” says Smith.
“We were able, first of all, to stream concerts of each suite from St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh and then we went back into St Giles’ and recorded the music for the album, all in one take, which was quite an undertaking.”
The four suites comprise pieces written by or connected to Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman and Dewey Redman all of whose work reflected turbulent times in America during the 1960s, including the civil rights struggle, and whose legacies continue to grow seven decades on.
“These saxophonists were regarded as mavericks when they emerged on the scene yet many of their own compositions and pieces with which they were associated drew on the blues and gospel music and have passed into the standard jazz repertoire,” says Smith who shares the featured soloist slot with fellow saxophonists Konrad Wiszniewski, Martin Kershaw and Adam Jackson.
“Ornette Coleman’s Lonely Woman, for example, is played by jazz students and jazz musicians the world over.”
Where Rivers Meet has drawn praise from across Europe, the US, Canada and Australia.
In reviewing the album, the UK’s leading jazz magazine, Jazzwise was moved to describe the SNJO as “a benchmark of excellence in British jazz” and online magazine Jazz Views asserted that Where Rivers Meet is “an absolutely magnificent recording.”
“There are intricate elements as we negotiate orchestrations of what were essentially smaller band compositions,” says Smith.
“But the music isn’t a step into the unknown.
"Familiar themes including the ballad The Very Thought of You, the spiritual Goin’ Home, which informed Dvorak’s New World Symphony, and even When the Saints Go Marching In all feature.
"We have a ball playing “the Saints” and hope the audience will enjoy it as much as we do.”
