As he prepares for the Fife Jazz Festival, drummer Tom Gordon tells Rob Adams about his hectic life and the new bands he is putting together

As if he doesn't have enough to keep him busy - what with teaching drums at Strathclyde University, taking workshops in schools and attending to a gig diary that includes frequent commutes from Dunfermline to play with the BBC Radio 2 Big Band - Tom Gordon is launching not one but two new bands this weekend as part of Fife Jazz Festival.

Gordon, a product of the Fife Youth Jazz Orchestra conveyor belt of talent, has been living back in Fife these past five years following a 15-year sojourn in London, and one of his new projects is a big band that, he hopes, will give young musicians something to move on to after FYJO as well as providing a platform for some of Scotland's established musicians.

"Giving something back sounds a bit too lofty for what I'm doing, to be honest," says Gordon. "But I was lucky enough to get a chance to play, not just with FYJO, but with another Fife institution, Tommy Sampson's big band, which for someone in his teens was great training. So I wanted to put something together that offers possibilities and see what happens."

The big band also gives Gordon a chance to work again with Richard Michael, the driving force behind FYJO for more than 30 years, who has come onboard with the new Fife Jazz Orchestra and was a major influence in Gordon's development as a drummer from the tender age of 11.

"My dad was a music teacher and I can remember going into school with him and always being attracted to the drums in the music room," he says. "I would pick up a pair of sticks and have a go. I suppose I would have been about seven then."

It was a few years before he got his own kit, making do in the meantime with a set of discarded ice-cream tubs as he played along with records and the radio and playing percussion in his primary school orchestra in Glenrothes.

FYJO, however, changed everything.

"I started to listen to jazz seriously as soon as I joined the youth orchestra and realised that this was what I really wanted to do," he says.

"I continued to play classical percussion - I was with the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland through my teens and enjoyed that, too.

"But with FYJO and then the Tommy Sampson band, both of which I played with until I was 18, I was absolutely in my element."

Not being able to find a jazz course that suited him at the time, he enrolled in the classical percussion course at the Guildhall in London in 1989 but was quickly involved with the college big band and playing in jazz bands with fellow students, many of whom went on to become significant players on the London jazz scene.

So having made the most of the college's networking opportunities and filled his contacts book while working his way towards his degree, Gordon was able to find work as a young freelance around London. He played with the BBC Concert Orchestra and the London Philharmonia, worked in the pit for West End shows including the Witches of Eastwick and Mary Poppins, and racked up a considerable number of jazz credits with trumpeter Jon Faddis, singer Patti Austin, saxophonist Sammy Nestico and composer Lalo Schifrin, among many others.

He was also occupying the drum chair - and still does - in the BBC Big Band when he decided to move back to Scotland.

"I didn't want my kids growing up with London accents," he says with his tongue hovering around his cheek. Seriously, though, it was never my plan to stay in London for ever and although as time goes on I get called less and less to do things down there - the last gig, apart from the BBC Big Band, was a corporate do with Rod Stewart - I haven't really suffered by moving. I like living in Dunfermline and there are plenty of good jazz musicians to play with in Scotland."

Four of these musicians instantly sprang to his mind when he was putting together the second of his new bands, Mirror Image. Actually a reincarnation of a band he formed in London, the line-up comprises tenor saxophonist Phil Bancroft, guitarists Malcolm MacFarlane and Kevin Mackenzie and bassist Calum Gourlay alongside Gordon. The music they'll play is mostly composed by Gordon but also includes his arrangements of jazz and swing standards, including the Woody Herman hit Four Brothers, a tune he particularly enjoyed playing with the Herman band itself as drummer on their European dates during the 1990s.

"The idea for Mirror Image comes from hearing Paul Motian's electric bebop group at Ronnie Scott's a few years ago," Gordon says. "I liked the sound of the two guitars in that band and in Marc Johnson's Bass Desires, which had a similar line-up. "It was so different from the way you usually hear the guitar used in jazz and I wanted to hear how the music I was writing and things like Four Brothers, which is a classic big band number, would sound with this instrumentation.

"But it's not just about me. The guys are all creative players who I've played with in their own bands and it's what they'll bring to the music, as much as anything else, that'll make this new incarnation interesting."

• Tom Gordon's Mirror Image plays The Jazz Bar, Edinburgh tonight and the Byre Theatre, St Andrews on Saturday. Fife Jazz Orchestra plays the Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline on Friday. For further details, call 0131 553 4000 or log on to www.fifejazzfestival.com