So big hats off to former Brotherhood trumpeter Chris Batchelor for taking the opportunity of his guest appearance with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland to introduce his former boss’s musical message to these young players and encouraging them into a free spirited, invigorating session that makes tonight’s concert at the Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow essential to any music lover’s well-being.
This was actually two very impressive sides of NYJOS. In the first half they gave a splendid account of the quiet man of British jazz, Kenny Wheeler’s wistful and thoughtfully ecstatic Sweet Time Suite, capturing the elegiac brass chorales, shapely contours and engaging uptempo movement that make Wheeler’s writing at once so deeply personal and highly approachable.
The occasional free-wheeling required to realise this piece, alongside discipline and control, was hugely magnified, however, when Batchelor joined them after the interval. In Brotherhood of Breath, Chris McGregor and his fellow Blue Note, saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, married African folk melody and sociability with an Ellingtonian richness and Mingus-like roguishness to create truly intoxicating jazz.
Playing in the round, NYJOS all but lifted the audience out of their seats during Pukwana’s MRA, with its brilliantly panoramic horn fanfares, and McGregor’s dancing, sunny Andromeda. If their individual improvising didn’t always match the collective effort, it didn’t matter. This was youthful enthusiasm and ability gloriously channelled.
Repeated tonight at Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket.
Star rating: ****
