Starbucks Edinburgh Jazz Festival 2004

The Edinburgh Jazz Festival has been going since 1979, and has so interesting a history it's hard not to write quite a lot about it. The Director for all those years, Mike Hart, decided to try out something modelled on the "Jazz Party" his then band had been invited to in North America. That seemed a not infeasible model for an initial operation in his hometown in August. Edinburgh would be a tourist trap without the extent of artistic activity which goes on during that month, and the amount that does go on is scarcely believable. By 1978 the International Festival had been going some thirty years. The Fringe which grew up around it from the 1950s—ad hoc smaller-scale productions of all sorts, filling all manner of spaces in the city — were already alarmingly numerous. Incredibly, there are now thousands of these performances annually, as you can check on the internet. Outwith the Jazz Festival a few are of jazz. The suggestion that the city's normally half-million population doubles during the period is credible if you've been there at the time.

The full Festival crush used to last three weeks, and has now been opened out a little over four. The earlier Jazz Festivals ran during the former three week period, but nowadays pretty well precede the four weeks, overlapping by a day or so into the start. The altered timetabling was a recognition of changing migratory patterns among jazz musicians in Europe. You had to be the right place at the right time.

Taking a stroll this year between one lunchtime gig and the afternoon one which followed it in the Hub, the main Festival venue, jazz and otherwise, I was alarmed to be crossing the route of the threatened opening procession of the Fringe. Fortunately I got back in time to miss being stopped by the parade.

Flocks of fliers for events were being handed out everywhere as I walked up the medieval High Street (part of a thoroughfare called "The Royal Mile" in tourist-speak). I was not stopped by a policeman at the door of the Hub (a black Victorian church building) that day. I had however been stopped by a policeman on my way into the Friday evening gig there. The narrow road uphill of the venue leads to the Castle, whose main courtyard ringed with stands is the venue of an annual "Military Tattoo" starring gymnasts and other military personnel from many countries who do colourful and lively things. The security scare this year was due to exponents of yoga and other pacific oriental disciplines taking issue with the Tattoo organisers, who had booked the army band of the People's Republic of China. Questions were raised about claims that the performance was purely artistic and political considerations were irrelevant. It was a change to receive fliers and see banners concerned with politically undiplomatic human rights.

To start with that Friday night, Bireli Lagrene had chickenpox. The English trio booked to accompany him had had to telephone Chamonix and pluck Angelo Debarre from his sunbathing. That master of the long lyrical line on post-Django guitar had been touring with them until ten days before. The replacement arrangement worked well, but there was something to the rhythm guitarist's apology that the concert might have been [even] better. The improbably named bassist Pete Kubrick Townsend did nice things with fingers and bow, and during the second half a few flames did leap from Christian Garrick's fiddle. I mention him as a cognosecenti reference: over the years, one delight of Festivals has been the chance to hear top London performers live rather than only and too rarely on radio. The late Kenny Baker and Bruce Turner were good examples.

This year I also heard again the really wonderful Roy Williams, who had a nine till midnight gig in a pub which claimed to have its own festival (bless the Orkney brewery). His take on John Lewis's "Skating in Central Park" was a real highlight, despite a clientele in part less than ideally enthusiastic. For future reference, other musicians play gigs not part of the festival. Buster Williams led a band two years back in a cellar, near premises other street barkers promise to show you on ghost tours. No to be confused with the current Festival venue Henry's,' the basement jazz club visitors to the city should check out.

Back to the beginning, even to the early-style jazz which was part of the festival's foundations. There is what is called a Mardi Gras parade through the streets at the start, and something approximating to Jazz of a Sunday Afternoon in a canopied open-air theatre in the park (called Princes Street Gardens) which fills the valley really at the centre of Edinburgh. On one side is the mediaeval Old Town, on the other the 18th century New Town, behind the stores of one-sided Princes street. On this street is The Royal Overseas League, which one year served as Jazz Festival HQ. Ray Bryant loved the place, had one of the guest-rooms and played in the concert-room. This year the place (a club) was devoted to all things Traditional, and I'm sorry I missed the local mainstay Dick Lee's take on the music of George Barnes. Mr. Lee is a reedman and composer who once filled a huge former venue with the sound of a jazz concerto for bagpipes — prior to the arrival of Sun Ra and Arkestra, who seemed to think it was 1936 and the Club Delisa, Chicago (guest pianist from Saturn).

This year's big guests played the city's symphony hall, the Usher Hall, scene of past marriages between official Festival and Jazz Festival) when the latter ran concurrent with a week of the former). Presiding clergy included Rev. Dick Hyman of the James P. Johnson memorial Church and Pastor Bob Wilber of the 1938 Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall Revival. I missed 2004's Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, but did hear their London Promenade concert on radio. Rabbi Marsalis referred to Joe Temperley as his 'secret weapon,' but Temperley has been a public enough star of smaller scale gigs during previous Jazz Festivals. The opening weekend also featured Charlie Haden's New Liberation Music Orchestra. I didn't hear much of Haden's Glasgow gig a few years back, though I was in the hall. His ideas about sound systems were not endorsed by the truly sound men who mostly did a splendid job elsewhere this 2004 in Edinburgh. There were suggestions that he was humoured and duped, with the result that the balance in his concert was good. Perhaps he's not used to playing converted 18th century churches. The cantor-compere of Pastor Wilber's service those years ago, Humphrey Lyttelton, also turned up in that same former church,. The Queen's Hall. Assembly Direct, Scotland's jazz-booking organisation, used to run concerts on the fringes of both the Jazz and other festivals there. It seems they run them nowadays as part of the Jazz Festival. They once featured Sonny Rollins, who resisted the idea of playing to a small elite audience till he was won over by talk of an intimate sound nobody whatever would hear otherwise.

The Queen's Hall also had Salsa Celtica, who combine Scottish traditional instruments in an ensemble the Festival programme calls New York Cuban. Too right, nobody has any business putting on this band as more than a somewhat better than marginal jazz attraction. It's fine, however, when other things are going. My most reliable spy spent that same night marvelling at both Mark Murphy's singing and the piano-playing of local superman Brian Kellock in accompaniment. Other options were the Old Bailey Jazz Advocates, whose mainstream programme presumably had the Festival Director back on guitar and perhaps John McGuff, a trombonist I've too long lacked the chance to readmire. This Festival also affords chances to hear local musicians you might not see often enough.

The programme photograph of the Advocates may well be from the band's 1960s heyday, Tom Finlay no longer sports a beard or colour in his hair, the last fact perhaps related to one long balmy afternoon seven years ago. He was well down a programme which involved a couple of tunes respectively from every pianist in that year's festival. One after another, they used up his easy options. Harrowing, for him!

One could also that night have gone to the Royal Overseas League. I've still never heard Bill Salmond's Louisiana Ragtime Band. Max Collie's Rhythm Aces always had a swing on the verge of going to Kansas City. Best round up the programme of older jazz styles here. Avoiding a list of names is unfortunate though necessary.

Kenny Davern played the Saturday afternoon in the Spiegeltent, the movable dance-hall in the gardens of George Square, like that clarinetist an irreplaceable classic, although fortunately in the 1960s Mr. Davern avoided being half-demolished so the university could stick up the concrete high-rise in which I once attended philosophy lectures. His Saturday afternoon entrance to the venue had comic effect. The preceding ensemble were still playing, under the leadership of Evan Christopher, who delivered various thumbnail accounts of Sidney Bechet between playing Bechet music. Incidentally, the trumpeter, Duke Heitger, should have been playing cornet. That's the real vehicle for a style which reawakens some of the style of Wild Bill Davison. There's no mention of Wild Bill in references to Mr. Heitger, so I suppose it comes naturally. Lucky us. Mr. Christopher clearly believed Maestro Davern disapproved of his soprano saxophone, for as soon as the moustache appeared in the doorway he stowed away the silver horn.

Maybe the best Christopher performance was of a number from the set of Hawaiian material Bechet recorded. As a student of New Orleans clarinetists the young man might well be able to perform as a ringer of Bechet, but while in public he paid some tribute he does have a voice of his own. It recalls a little more Albert Nicholas, with tendencies when he bends notes to sound like Herb or Edmond Hall. The Scottish veteran Forrie Cairns is also a Bechet man, and turned up after long absence (there have been past tributes to Edinburgh's great clarinetist, Sandy Brown) in The Scottish Jazz All-Stars, where he shone. Their bassist, Ronnie Rae Sr., should surely sometime be got to do a Ray Brown tribute. He and the drummer Murray Smith (who died, I note with dismay, a few months ago) were quite up with the American veterans whose performances they graced twenty and more years back. Ronnie Sr. has at least several singing daughters, and a son — John — whose prodigious musical activities have given him the nickname the Godfather.

Another appointment precluded my hearing the Classic Jazz Orchestra of a sometime contributor to the present site, Ken Mathieson. I hope I'll hear what he did with the music of Jelly Roll Morton. Two years ago he'd a band doing arrangements from the Buck Clayton and Buddy Tate small group bag, with an elderly-looking local altoist who had a Hell of a tone (as Duke Ellington once said of another man almost equally far from famous — Hilton Jefferson, if you must know). Great to be amazed by a local player!

Should I mention a pricey set by an Original Dixieland Jazz Band under the leadership of Jimmy laRocca (son of the founder)? Dick Lee's George Barnes set was like the aforementioned sets by Messrs. Mathieson and Christopher (who had another gig also graced with the trombone of Bob Havens, and not enough pure, startlingly guitar from Lars Edegran, under Mr. Heitger's name) repertoire. His regular Tuesday night band (Swing 2004 — it had names like Swing 84 or Swing 99 until he had to avoid Swing OO being read Swingoo, or Swing 01 being taken for a Klezmer band ) has now I see a violin beside his reeds. This current Quartet du Hot Club d'Edinbourg (once a quintet with trumpeter and John Kirby affinity) can be listed with Angelo Debarre, and the local Vent D'Est beside the duo I was especially sorry to miss on the Sunday night, matching arguably the greatest living jazz guitarist not born in America (Martin Taylor, whose disadvantage of English birth has long been overcome by Scottish residence and friendship and work with Stephane Grappelli) with the violin of Didier Lockwood. The ragtime Lars Edegran normally presides over in New Orleans had its own representations.

Others to be excluded from my list of regretted omissions (this is a huge festival, you miss more than you see, inevitably, being limited to a tiny proportion of the alleged 50,000 tickets sold) include Tangalgo, which has Mario Caribe, Edinburgh's only truly first-rate Brazilian bassist. A sound-man I interviewed raved about them! Mr. Caribe was also in a band called Moishe's Bagel. 01?

Oh, and there was Buddy Guy in the Queen's Hall, and the only reason to deplore his presence in a jazz festival ( pace another writer on this site) could be his regrettable tendency to play the rock repertoire of his wealthier juniors not betters. This is no longer a festival it costs little to attend, but beside noting the legitimacy of including a bluesman in a jazz festival I have to say it cost over forty bucks to attend his gig. There was more blues that afternoon (Rev. Doc and his Congregation) in the Spiegeltent, and the second weekend of the festival did have a Blues Festival with more traditional sponsorship from a brewery. I missed that. The venue's part of a brewery nearly into the city suburbs, and a nice venue it is. This year also, one of the best past venues was lost when a city centre brewery closed. Globalised beer!

I also missed the Scandinavian theme, from Esbjorn Svensson's Trio (E.S.T.) — 'acoustic piano ... opening up to people who love rock and dance' — to Jazzin' Babies (Erik Ellertson 'brilliant trumpeter' in a group in their 20s who play music of the (19)20s. In other Nordic company a member of Salsa Celtica apparently 'explore(d) spacious ECM sounds from his ambient Celtic pipes and saxophones' on a set entitled Jazz Smorgasbord 1. The Peter Wettre Quintet apparently has 'an assimilation of tenor history,' and Dilje Nergaard was the Norse representative in the Festival's array of singers — including Linda Dalseth, the aforenamed Mr. Murphy, the local Todd Gordon, Barbara Morrison, Niki King, and above all Carol Kidd. Mrs. Kidd, an American academic assured me — he attends the festival every year — lost all pretence of having any competition when Ella Fitzgerald died.

Oh, and the big bands included the one Mark Murphy sang with on a second date, and a college jazz orchestra and the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra, Mr. Smith is a Scot of the tenor saxophone spoken of as highly as was (and should still be) Mrs. Kidd as a singer, though she has not his composing ambitions and accomplishments. A duo set with Smith and Brian Kellock had one reliable veteran friend of 21 festivals standing thoroughly in awe, especially of the ballad performances. I missed hearing Mr. Smith, but he was sitting near me at a gig by Les Ecossais. This is a very, very young group. I first saw the pianist, James Cairney, several years ago. One talks of players growing, but in his case it's literal, since as I recall he was about fourteen then. Their playing was pretty well contemporary in style, with a decent variety of repertoire including (and I do mean this word) different compositions by members of the band as well as by Dave Holland and Christian McBride. Some of the music rather conceals the instrumental voices, but the tenorist Theo Forrest's tone is rooted in the cool school, and he did nice things on I think sopranino (small, curved, hard for me to see). Philip Cardwell struck me as having a very thorough command of the trumpet, other than when he tried to play one sustained pedal note. It will come. The gig was poorly attended, which was a shame, since apart from the opening notes (which had no dynamics, likely due only to nerves — I asked the sound-man) everything was right. The bassist's grandfather was in the audience,. and young Euan Burton and friends added a predictable item to the programme, but joyfully, with Cardwell's new New Orleans lead. The drummer is Doug Hough, and he drove that appropriately.

The oldest festival performer was I think Humphrey Lyttelton, but this year also turning 38 (there is a festival tradition of putting names this way — six years back Lyttelton was '57') John Bunch was introduced as one of the greats, and frankly he is one. Even his fingers seem to flow. He drew on compositions from Sonny Rollins, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn (his "UMMG" was going through my head for days after this) And Jimmy Rowles (whom the great man described as his friend — two of a kind indeed!) Always an interesting programmer, he had great fun in "St. Louis Blues," in one of his more extravert performances — Brian Shiels, bass, the Godfather drums.

More lately celebrated for his CD Coming Home , arriving onstage brandishing the award it recently won. Colin Steele played a programme on themes of obvious Scottish derivation all to be found on that disc (Caber records, and there is more about that label and this trumpeter on this site). Dave Milligan on piano, Julian Arguelles on saxophones (another recent immigrant to Scotland) and Aidan O'Donnell on bass were mightily impressive, with the Godfather.

I saw that same drummer the following afternoon, in the wake of a set which included the second cancellation in my programme. Scott Hamilton was indisposed. We were not due to hear him as he was not so long ago heard at the Village Vanguard, doing the Al Cohn Zoot Sims thing with Harry Allen. This gig was under the sign of Coleman Hawkins, and I hope to say more soon about the man who did turn up: Danny Moss, now almost 77, and these days roaring like late 1950s Hawkins. Big saxophonists don't always sound the same. Listen for instance to Joe Temperley records from over a few years! Mr. Moss emigrated to Australia some years back, to begin a South West Pacific school of tenor saxophone playing, against habitual unfeeling dreary clones of bastardised Coltrane. Warm Decembers, and summers as before, touring European jazz festivals: a great idea! Year one he started in Edinburgh, un-fresh off an Air Jordan flight which got stuck seven hours in the Middle East during the Gulf War. In 2004 it was a sudden sea fog which confused his plans. The steeple I saw when heading for a beer during Colin Steele's interval had vanished by that concert's end. Did anybody actually see the Chinese army band that night? The Moss flight had landed miles away, he had spent the night with his wife's brother, who had driven him to Edinburgh in the morning. Obviously his bed had been comfortable, his playing was utterly triumphant. Doubtless he was inspired that his replacement partner was Karen Sharpe, who lately joined Humphrey Lyttelton's band on the retirement of Kathy Stobart (herself a tenorist who has given Scott Hamilton some challenges). Ms. Sharpe is a very pretty blonde lady in the Coleman Hawkins line of playing which goes through to Dexter Gordon. A powerful player in a fetching red top. .

Last time I'd seen Danny Moss he had been given a standing ovation by his backing trio. One of them, Ricky Steele, was with him in Edinburgh. The Godfather played drums, the pianist was Brian Kellock.

My last gig before going home was a Kellock trio set with John Rae and their regular bassist Kenny Ellis. Not so long ago Kellock did a Fats Waller show, striding with vim. He used to be a wonderful accompanist of older swing players, with lots of tone colour. He had a mop of ginger hair. When he cut it short some extra fingers grew on his hands.

This was a good set to go out on, with some Horace Silver tunes ("Funkalero," "Break City" including a few stride bits a la Oscar P.) An Ahmad Jamal blues did make plain the piano was maybe a little over-miked, but if I heard Benny Green play like that I'd seriously raise my estimation of even him. A baby in the audience cried a little during a very slow pianissimo "When You're Smiling," but suitably soothed slept through some later high-power storming. The delicate unaccompanied ballad encore was still more than I've heard the man play even yet.

The best pianist in the world, the friend of 21 festivals exhaled, and went on about the Tommy Smith and the Mark Murphy sets. I gather he hadn't been to the Scottish Jazz All-Stars gig. Kellock too.

Loren Stillman, Kenny Oehlers, Enzo Rocco, the Bancroft Brothers, Preston Reed and Arild Andersen. — and did I mention the Morton and ragtime playing of Morten Gunnar Larsen. I missed all of them. Tony Malaby too — and a positive chamber choir of singers. And also a couple of alto players I regret not having missed in the past. But I hope I know where to stop.

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