On 15 December, the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) Big Band will be presenting the impressive results of a six-month joint project involving trombonist and composer Dennis Rollins MBE, with phenomenal arrangements created by RNCM teacher Iain Dixon and students from the RNCM at a concert in Manchester.
Although the RNCM Big Band has been an entity on campus for decades, Iain Dixon is now bringing a fresh approach, with a focus on composer-led, contemporary charts for this, his second project with the band. Having actually played with the group during his college years, Iain’s current mission is one of “raising the profile of jazz within the building…A lot of the students want to do it and obviously not all of them are going to be in an orchestra. A lot of students want to diversify their musical abilities and jazz is a perfect way to do that. One of the things I want to promote with the band is that we play original music, written by the guest and arranged by me, or by the students. This is a real collaborative thing,” Dixon explains.
Earlier this year, Iain Dixon was listening to the Dennis Rollins Velocity Trio album The 11th Gate (2011) and totally fell in love with it. He simply couldn’t fathom how this incredibly vast sound was coming out of just three musicians. Dixon could hear influences from “funk, jazz, New Orleans, blues, and all sorts of other things – I found it really interesting. When I found it was a trio, it was just remarkable.” Recognising that the music “seemed to fit the spectrum of abilities within the [RNCM] band,” a plan was quickly formulated: to recreate the entirety of the 11th Gate album for the big band setting.
I approached Dennis Rollins to find out more about The 11th Gate album and this exciting upcoming project. “Featuring eleven compositions, the collection of songs on ’11th Gate’ is inspired by the opening of a mystical gate on the date 11/11/11, a rare numerical coincidence believed by many to usher in a golden age of ‘Global Awareness’ regarding the evolution of human collective consciousness. 11/11/11 was also my 47th birthday (4+7=11) and the release of the album,” Rollins explains. “When Iain Dixon approached me with the idea, honestly, I was almost moved to tears… To hear ‘The 11th Gate’ compositions in a big band format feels a very natural progression from the trio sound I’m used to hearing. Sonically larger and with greater dimension. The arrangements are by Iain Dixon and I wanted him to have free reign in that process which included choosing any co-arrangers he had in mind. I love the idea that any of my compositions are used for (classical) education purposes. If my music has the ability to crossover into other genres, then I feel it’s doing what music should do, which is simply to create openness and encourage music without labels. I’m thrilled to be in collaboration with RNCM on this Velocity Trio Big Band Project. I can’t wait!”
Fortuitously, Dixon and his small team of outstanding students were fast workers, because the project only had six months to be arranged and finalised before the performance date. He elaborates: “We have an amazing young saxophonist called Jasmine Brown, who has jazz heritage in that she is jazz drummer Steve Brown’s daughter. She’s terrific. Coincidentally, I think the standout track from the show is Samba Galactica, which Jasmine has arranged for the band. I’m very proud that some of the arrangements have been done by the students.”
“It’s a big undertaking, transcribing music from a recording, augmenting it into a big band form, incorporating the capabilities of the students. That’s one of the big things that I want to do with the band, to make everybody comfortable in their musical capabilities… We are trying to make it bespoke to the students. Because they’re not all coming from a jazz background, it’s very important to make the improvising sections accessible. This is the tradition of jazz, isn’t it? It’s personal music. You play what you play, you play how you play and what you play. That’s how it should be. It’s a personal musical statement. Making students comfortable is paramount.”
Taking advantage of the abundance of first-rate musicians at the college, the RNCM Big Band has a full lineup of five trumpets, five trombones, five saxophones, with a rhythm section of drums, percussion, double bass, piano, second keyboard, and two guitars. Iain Dixon explains: “I felt that was important for Dennis’ music, it’s got a big funk factor and getting the rhythm section big was important on this one. There’s also potential to expand with anything, woodwind, strings, singers. My initial instinct was to use everything, but I am trying to keep it manageable so we can really focus on the improvisation, as part of the project will be to help our students understand improvising. They’re not professional jazz musicians who just come in and ‘do the thing,’ you have to bring them together with regard to playing in an ensemble, playing the style of the music and also to encourage improvisation. The important thing is to draw out their talents, how to feel and express rhythm on a groove.”
RNCM Head of Jazz and Improvisation, bassist Steve Berry, is researching how to encourage and develop improvised music in the building. Berry had the idea to allow the college big band to move away from published or guest arrangements, to allow the group to grow, be more creative, to have its own identity and its own, specifically written charts. “It makes a statement that this is possible, that this can be creative and good,” Iain Dixon explains. With an impetus on challenging the students, allowing them to explore beyond their classical background, get them to explore improvisation via Dennis Rollin’s music. The thought now is really “Who can create music from the ground up which is specifically for the band?”
Dixon continues: “I think that any approach that’s based on ‘this is how to do it’ is a non-starter with any creative art form. What we are trying to develop here is an approach that is very student-focussed, we look at their ability and what they can do. Classical musicians have every skill they could possibly need to be an improviser, it’s just the way they think about it, the way they think about rhythm, the way they use their ears, the way they think about theory. It’s all there and they don’t know how they connect in order to be an improviser. Once they get it, it’s not that mysterious.”
Originally having studied at RNCM as a clarinettist himself, saxophone and improvisation teacher Iain Dixon worked for years with the BBC Big Band, as well as with Alan Barnes, Julian Arguelles Octet, Stan Tracey Big Band, et al., as well as touring with Brian Ferry, Michael Brecker and Simply Red.
Invited by Head of Jazz Steve Berry to teach at RNCM, the concert on 15 December marks Iain Dixon’s second project with the RNCM Big Band. With his first engagement having centred around Dixon’s own compositions (link to feature below), this second performance involving Dennis Rollins and The 11th Gate album is an exciting evolution both for the music and for the college, befitting the original sentiment behind the recording of a collective consciousness.
