Ten years of jazz guitars, saxophones, piano ... and drams

ROB ADAMS

Published on 11 Sep 2008

The tenth Black Bottle Islay Jazz Festival; what a sobering thought. Odd, isn't it, how something that starts off as an improbable adventure can quickly turn into, if not the routine, then certainly a habit.

The tenth Black Bottle Islay Jazz Festival; what a sobering thought. Odd, isn't it, how something can start off as an improbable adventure - shipping a goodly proportion of Scotland's jazz musicians over to the southernmost island in the Hebrides and giving them distilleries to play in - can quickly turn into, if not the routine, then certainly a habit.

That first year was a toe-in-the water job. But standards of performance were set, especially when guitarist Martin Taylor and accordionist Jack Emblow instantly established Bruichladdich Hall as one of the most inspiring venues on the jazz circuit. Expectations followed and have, by and large, been met.

The first Islay Jazz Festival also introduced newcomers to the impressive Islay House. Here, in successive years, American guitarist Preston Reed wooed with his two-handedly percussive and yet impressionistic playing, another guitarist, Jim Mullen, played the shortest set on record, due to a power cut after about 32 bars, and perhaps most memorably, Fionna Duncan sang in that familiar bruised and bluesy voice while Brian Kellock played the family piano in a sitting room with dozens of extra chairs set out by the man of the house himself.

You don't get that kind of thing at Montreux or Nice or even in the jewel of European jazz festivals, Jazz Sous les Pommiers in Coutances in Normandy. Good though these events can be, they don't offer the splendour of trumpeter Colin Steele's jazz-folk-classical hybrid Stramash playing at Bunnahabhain Distillery, a setting that, on a clear September afternoon, simply takes the breath away.

Only Islay, too, could have inspired John Rae's Big Feet, 20 or so musicians in various outlaw forms of Scottish dress, playing an exuberant form of what might be called trad-jazz - as in folk meters meet swinging big band improvisation rather than the banjo connotations - with the local pipe band wading in for the roaring finale.

And so to the tenth edition, which welcomes regulars including bassist Mario Caribe, celebrating his perfect attendance record with a concert that begins with one musician, Caribe playing solo, and ends up with 10 - or more, if the pipe band hangs around Bunnahabhain after acting as a welcoming party. Colin Steele, who's written a whole album's worth of material on Islay, is back in a duo, with pianist David Milligan, and leading his grooving, very Scottish-sounding quintet. First-time guests include American singer-songwriter Harry Chapin's daughter, Jen, with New York's Rosetta Trio, one of America's leading young tenor saxophonists Jimmy Greene, and Swedish pianist Jacob Karlzon, whose gig with Tommy Smith at Ionad Chaluim Chille Ile, just outside Bowmore, might just play out to one of the most stunning sunsets in jazz festivaldom.

All that and the sponsors slip you a glass of Islay's star malts as you arrive at every gig. It's a dirty job but - hic - somebody has to cover it.