Jazz International would like to thank everyone who has attended some of its inaugural events, and also for the support and encouragement from so many people. I am delighted to report that our application for funding from the Scottish Arts Council has been successful which helps ensure that we can further develop a rich and varied programme of jazz and jazz-related artists performing in Scotland.

The first few concerts received rave reviews, and we will add to those listed below as we stage an increasing number of events.

We look forward to welcoming you to future concerts.

With best wishes

Todd Gordon/Jazz International

JOHN TAYLOR & GWILYM SIMCOCK
Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
The Scotsman -
***** Five stars

The combination of the seasoned John Taylor and the fast-rising Gwilym Simcock promised a memorable feast of creative jazz piano, and so it turned out. Whether performing individually or in tandem, the pair maintained an absorbing level of creative thinking and interaction that ensured a long concert never felt like a note too many.

Hearing each play a solo set was a treat in itself, but it was the duets that really scored. Two pianos with no rhythm section is not unprecedented in jazz, but it is unusual, and the occasion was given extra spice by the generational contrast. Taylor is long established as one of the greatest players on the European jazz scene, while Simcock is a major talent in the making and acknowledges the older pianist as an influence.

Their explosive duet seemed to click into place right from the opening notes of Cole Porter's Everything I Love, and they negotiated the effervescent tumbling phrases as if they do this all the time (it was only their third collaboration). Their wide-ranging musical resources, structured manipulation of space and ability to respond to ideas in spontaneous fashion were exhilarating.

Joe Henderson's brooding Black Narcissus, a lovely, thoughtful development of A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square and a sophisticated high-speed romp through On Green Dolphin Street confirmed their empathy. They switched pianos for their encore with similar results.

KENNY MATHIESON
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Music, John Taylor & Gwilym Simcock,
Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh.
Rob Adams, The Herald
***** Five stars

The sight of one Steinway grand piano onstage is still a relative luxury for a jazz pianist on the UK circuit, so seeing two side-by-side must have felt like an extra special treat for John Taylor and Gwilym Simcock.

Representing the cream of their respective generations, the pair certainly played as if inspired by this good fortune, delivering a truly outstanding first presentation for Todd Gordon’s brave new Jazz International venture in Edinburgh.

Taylor’s opening solo section, working from a spare, careful statement into a flowing, always melodic improvisation, showed exactly why he has been so revered in Europe over the past thirty years. Lyrical and boldly assertive, his Between Moons almost defines the European style of jazz composition and yet as he confirmed in duets with Simcock, his ability to breathe new life into the American jazz repertoire makes this his natural habitat, too.

High class and totally involving though their solo spots were – Simcock is a playful though very logical improviser – it was in the duets that this concert shone particularly. Each tune, including Cole Porter’s Everything I love and a gorgeous reading of A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square, was a spontaneous conversation.

At times each would add a chord or a colour to the other’s previous statement, laying down a kind of good-natured challenge. Phrases would be exchanged or returned slightly twisted, actions such as playing on the piano’s strings and innards would be mimicked, and the pieces would build with witty, creative dialogue that was clearly fun for the players as well as totally absorbing for the listener.

ENRICO RAVA & STEFANO BOLLANI,
QUEEN'S HALL, EDINBURGH
ROB ADAMS, THE HERALD, 1 MAY 2008
***** Five stars

Two concerts into its programme, the Jazz International series at the Queen's Hall is playing a blinder. As strong as our home-grown jazz scene has become over the past decade, we need regular reminders on the big stage of what's happening in the outside world, especially when it's as good as this Italian trumpet and piano duo.

Rava and Bollani sound and sometimes act like a continental version of Laurel and Hardy - one helpfully translates the other's announcements from English into Italian - and there's no little theatre in among music that slips literally, and seamlessly, from the ridiculous to the sublime.

A tribute to Fred Astaire, preceded by a few comical steps from Rava, took Cheek to Cheek into variously hectic and daft places it's seldom been before - that'll be cheek as in impudence, then - only to melt into a sensitive reading of Antonio Carlos Jobim's gorgeous ballad Retrato Em Branco e Preto.

Rava's introduction of his partner "on drums" may have been a slip of the tongue. But Bollani made it prescient, rounding off the boogie-ing Algir Dalbughi by cuffing the piano and accompanying the first of three encores on the lid, the frame and finally the keys with rhythmical use of the forearm and a water bottle.

In between, he displayed a touch that married classical romance with blues, swing, bop and oblique invention, complementing Rava's at times plangent, at times quick-thinking and playful improvisations and contributing to a sound that on the trumpeter's prolonged final note was utterly - no, I'm not going to apologise for the pun - Ravashing.
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ENRICO RAVA & STEFANO BOLLANI,
QUEEN'S HALL, EDINBURGH
***** Five stars

THE sumptuous and prolonged golden note on which they ended their third encore expressed something of the sublime aspect of this extraordinary Italian trumpet and piano duo's playing, even if it did not show the witty and at times wonderfully loopy nature of their stageplay.

They could have just met each other in a bar: Rava, the grizzled old jazzer, leaning nonchalantly at the piano, occasionally dismantling his trumpet or peering quizzically at his younger partner as he spun delicate traceries from the keyboard or attacked it with an energy and dexterity that attracts comparisons to Art Tatum (though also with flashes of Stravinsky, not to mention Chico Marx).

And when Rava finally brought in his horn, he could be two players, shifting from the brazen to the lusciously velvet in mid-breath, languid yet well-considered phrases working themselves into manic yells.

There was much more immediacy than in the intense communion of their current ECM album The Third Man. There was also a frequently cinematic quality to their music, with Bollani suggesting considerable potential as a silent movie pianist in Algir Dalbughi, a sort of boogie with Keystone Cops overtones, while their pantomimic dismantling of Fred Astaire's I'm In Heaven roped in everything from the Seven Dwarves to the Last Post.

There was a louche yet big-hearted rendering of a Charlie Parker standard, a sweetly melancholy excursion into Antonio Jobim territory and, of course, the gentle Italian song on which they finished so beautifully. Bellissimo indeed.

When Grammy award winning guitarist Martin Taylor, who has collaborated with great singers including Peggy Lee, Martin Carthy, Jamie Cullum, Dionne Warwick and Bryn Terfel, chose to record a special duo album with a vocalist, he chose the UK’s fastest rising jazz singer, Alison Burns. This summer, the duo hit the road to tour the UK to promote this new album which is produced by legendary record producer Tony Platt (Bob Marley, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Buddy Guy). The tour and album take its inspiration from the Grammy award-winning collaborations between Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Pass, mixing repertoire from The Great American Songbook and contemporary material.

“Taylor is the finest British guitarist of his generation” -The Times, London

“Burns has the ability, rare in all but the best jazz singers, to make even the most frequently heard, over-recorded standards sound fresh and interesting” -Jazz Journal

Recognised as one of Britain’s top jazz singers, Todd Gordon presents a brand new show which pays homage to the historic musical collaborations in the 1960s between Frank Sinatra and the Count Basie Orchestra. Songs will feature great numbers from the three commercial albums they recorded together, plus a sprinkling of songs with new arrangements in the Sinatra-Basie style that these two giants of jazz and swing never got to record together.

“Doing it his way, the ghost of Sinatra lives on in the work of one of his most polished admirers” -Clive Davis, The Times

“Gordon has made the American songbook his own” -The Guardian.