Location: Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow Star rating: ***** AS the climax of a weekend of spectacular success for Glasgow Jazz Festival - the misfortunate accident affecting the Riverboat Shuffle aboard the PS Waverley apart - this concert by Scotland's other national orchestra could not be topped. Director Tommy Smith leads by example with assured, disciplined playing, and he demands the highest standards of his bandmates.

Location: Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow
Star rating: *****

AS the climax of a weekend of spectacular success for Glasgow Jazz Festival - the misfortunate accident affecting the Riverboat Shuffle aboard the PS Waverley apart - this concert by Scotland's other national orchestra could not be topped. Director Tommy Smith leads by example with assured, disciplined playing, and he demands the highest standards of his bandmates.

There's no arm-waving and hip-wiggling at the front, just the occasional cue, and his own arrangement of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, written for pianist Brian Kellock, is one of the greatest accomplishments in a career that includes plenty of competition.

With the talent of a player whose ability to slot into any band playing music from any era (and in any key you fancy) is legendary as his inspiration, Smith has taken the elements of the Gershwin piece and made a history of jazz music that clocks in at nearly an hour and showcases much more than Kellock's apparently effortless transition from classical reading to boogie woogie to free improvisation and back again.

Delightful details are too numerous to mention, but Smith's own solo incorporating fragmentary echoes of that famous opening glisssando shortly after it has made its belated appearance, Tom McNiven's New Orleans-style trumpet (and matching striped blazer), and Kellock's shift out of the orchestrally-familiar cadenza into a Latin American rhythm stood out.

After the break the featured soloist was drummer Alyn Cosker in a set celebrating the music of Buddy Rich. We were transported to one era alone here, with even Bugle Call Rag acquiring a Sixties sheen, and an arrangement of Bernstein's West Side Story the main feature. All it lacked was slice of Black Forest Gateau and a glass of Mateus Rose.

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