UK Jazz News

Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival 2023. Scottish Jazz Weekend Part 1

St Brides Centre. 24 November 2023

L-R: Scott Gibbs, Ewan Hastie, Stephen Henderson. Photo by Patrick Hadfield

The Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival’s Scottish Jazz Weekend has become a regular add-on to the summer festival, and a welcome relief to an otherwise bleak November.

This celebration of Scottish jazz was opened by the Ewan Hastie Trio. A regular performer in Edinburgh, this was the first opportunity I’d had to see Hastie’s own band. Performing a set of self-penned pieces (aside from the closing number, Miles Davis’ version of the traditional song Billy Boy), the winner of last year’s BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year lead his cross generational trio of pianist Tom Gibbs and Stephen Henderson on drums with style and confidence. There was beautiful playing from all three.

The mood was suitably mellow and contemplative. Hastie’s writing leaves a lot of space for the other musicians to interpret his work, and the assuredness they took to the task belies the relative youth of this project – they’ve only been gigging together since October.

Henderson, who seemed to be a fixture at St Brides – I saw him play with four different bands over the weekend – proves to be a remarkably sensitive performer, listening intently to the other musicians in whatever setting he finds himself, demonstrating why he’s becoming one of the go-to drummers on the Scottish scene 

L-R: Dave Milligan, Calum Gourlay, Colin Steele, Stephen Henderson. Photo by Patrick Hadfield

The late show featured trumpeter Colin Steele celebrating the music of Joni Mitchell. Steele led a quartet of Dave Milligan on piano, Calum Gourlay on bass, and making his second appearance of the evening, Stephen Henderson on drums. Steele played the whole set with his trumpet muted and explained that he’d recently heard a podcast in which Mitchell herself said that a muted trumpet was how she envisaged her vocal style – this, said Steele, made him feel both surprised and vindicated.

Steele playing up close to the mic gave the music intimacy. Tin Angel, played as a duet between Steele and Gourlay, was beautifully effective and with many of the tunes played at a relatively slow pace, this made those sections when they lit rip even more powerful.

Joni Mitchell’s affection for jazz, and its influence over her music is well known. She collaborated with Charles Mingus and worked with Wayne Shorter many times. In turning her music into jazz tunes, it seemed like Steele and his quartet were repaying the favour. That the music works so well as jazz is perhaps not surprising, but a mark of the band’s talent as well as Mitchell’s.

They finished with River, Mitchell’s anti-Christmas song which has of course become a Christmas standard. It might be early for Christmas music, but it was a beautiful, sensitive moment on which to close.

Patrick Hadfield lives in Edinburgh, occasionally takes photographs, and sometimes blogs at On the Beat. He is @patrickhadfield@mastodon.scot on Mastodon.

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