The Elusive Tree Ensemble is a product of Glasgow’s vibrant jazz scene where the well-paid gigs may be few but the musicians somehow thrive and develop, creating strong band identities which in this case includes Rachel Lightbody’s wordless vocals in a front line with alto and tenor saxophones and trumpet.
Their music combines both airy melodies and more urgent, urban grooves fuelled by Ben MacDonald’s superbly fluent guitar playing and Doug Hough’s crisp, assertive but never domineering drumming, with Paul Harrison, on organ, providing harmonic richness and bass pedal propulsion.
Alto saxophonist Adam Jackson’s For Folks Sake gets into the kind of swirling, reeling traditional-music-inspired jazz that the Anglo-Scottish-Irish band Lammas used to purvey so successfully in the 1990s, with Lightbody impressively taking the role Christine Tobin used to fill in that band, and Jackson’s Amsterdam emphasises the ensemble’s compositional strength with staccato menace giving way to calmer tunefulness and expansive soloing from trumpeter Phil Cardwell.
It’s all immensely satisfying and while Cardwell, MacDonald and tenor saxophonist Andy Baker all contribute fine compositions, a particular highlight is their conversion of ill-starred Californian singer-songwriter Judee Sill’s The Kiss into a tenderly magnificent jazz ballad.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here