TOMMY SMITH (Part Two) - On The Road With The SNJO: The American Adventure
As well as his work with his own band and the collective Trio with Arild Anderson and Paolo Vinaccia, Tommy Smith is the founder and artistic director of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. Since its formation in 1995, under Smith’s direction the SNJO has performed repertory works by Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, and celebrated the work of Gil Evans and his associations with Miles Davis. The orchestra has also commissioned arrangements and original works that have been performed by some of the leading jazz musicians from all across the globe, including Makoto Ozone, Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano and Branford Marsalis.
Not content with this, in 2013 Smith realized his ambitious plan to take the SNJO on tour in the United States and Canada, and whilst there the orchestra spent two days in New York’s Avatar studio, and the resulting album, American Adventure shows once and for all that the SNJO are now a force to be reckoned with on the international stage.
Smith is quite rightly proud of the orchestra’s considerable achievements, and what follows is Tommy’s own words on how the tour and recording came about.
“Everything began to roll on the lush green fairways of Oak Hill Country Club golf course back in June 2011, while I was in the USA touring with Arild Andersen. I recall walking up the 8th fairway with Rochester Jazz Festival director John Nugent, muting the idea that the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra would be an ideal band to play at his festival; I then slipped him a couple of SNJO recordings, we then putted out and went to get our sandwiches that our playing partner, Marc Iocona, had ordered from using the phone in the tree, as you do, next to the 9th tee. A month after the Rochester Festival had finished Nugent emailed me to say he’d love to have the SNJO come over and play in 2012. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the financial support in place necessary to fly over that year, so I took my small group Karma to tour USA and Canada with the help of Nugent and an old friend, Joel Chriss, who manages many of my US friends, and while playing Rochester Jazz Festival, I had time to tee it up again, early one morning, with Nugent and ascertain if he still wanted the SNJO to come over, as the SNJO were now in a better financial position. He said yes and gave me advice on expanding the tour to other jazz festivals in Canada.
Upon my return to Scotland in July 2012 I set to work to coordinate a short SNJO tour of the USA and Canada. Writing to over 30 festivals, the first to commit to the tour were Rochester, Toronto and Ottawa. I gave the task of finding a New York concert to agent, Joel Chriss. Dizzy’s Jazz Club, where I had just played with Karma didn’t have a free date; although, Lindsay, our manager, found out we could hire the place for the price of a luxury car. No thanks. Birdland, Blue Note and numerous other places were all dead ends. Lindsay enlisted the Andrew Carnegie Society but they ended up wanting more from us then we could give. Joel finally, after much deliberation, found an opportunity for us to play the Iridium Jazz Club; a place I knew and had a good reputation.
Lindsay then went in search of a rehearsal space, an acoustic bass and more practical things like hotels and coach hire. She had great success getting a space for us to rehearse at New York University and talked the director of jazz music, Dr. Dave Schroeder, who knew me from the old days when I used to sit-in with Jaco Pastorius at the Blue Note and Randy Brecker’s club Seventh Avenue South, into hosting a concert for us.
I was still in conversation with Montreal Jazz Festival about the sixth and final date, but they were much harder to convince and the director was unsure we could pull off a concert in the spectacular venue he had in mind for us. John Nugent and I managed to persuade him with conjecture, videos and CDs. It wasn’t until we played Montreal in June 2013 with 12,000 people cheering us on that I fully understood exactly what he meant.
After most of tour fell into place, I suggested to the SNJO board that while we’re in New York City, we don’t we make a record and invite some of America’s greatest musicians, since we’re on their doorstep. As we still had recording funds and Lindsay had made considerable saving elsewhere a green light was given to me. I then proceeded to get in touch with many of my friends in the business. Gary Burton, Dave Holland, Chris Potter, Jerry Bergonzi, Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts, John Patitucci, Clarence Penn, Joe Locke, Dave Liebman, Randy Brecker, Bill Evans, Dave Kikoski, Mike Stern and Kurt Elling. Seven of these fourteen musicians were available for the two dates I had booked at Avatar Studios, a place I knew well. The engineer I hired was my old colleague James Farber, who had recorded many of my records at Avatar. So we were in trusted and capable hands, all we needed was music to record and a well-rehearsed orchestra able to cope with the pressures of such an intimidating job. I also, wanted to hire a saxophonist to sit and play my parts, as I didn’t want to make the same mistake of playing and producing at the same time, as I did on the Bobby Wellins session we did a month earlier in Glasgow. So I called an old friend of mine, Donny McCaslin and he could only record one day, so he suggested Joel Frahm for the other day. I didn’t know Joel personally but his playing was excellent on the various recordings I’d heard. My plan was to give Donny and Joel my solo improvisations and all written parts so I could concentrate on producing the session. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice, the thing you really want to do for the good of it all.
Unlike most countries I visit, America is especially difficult to enter as a worker due to their strict immigration concerns. John Nugent kindly offered to pay and deal with the visa petitions for our whole entourage, which included 15 musicians, manager and live-sound technician. Unfortunately, for everyone, except me, all the SNJO had to visit the US embassy in London to be interviewed early in the morning. This process, not only involved, everyone completing a tedious 10 page application, telephone interview, traveling to and staying in London but leaving their passports for a week, plus paying for the privilege. American artists coming to Scotland only need to give Lindsay their passport information and everything else is taken care of; a very unfair system, making traveling to America with a large entourage challenging and expensive.
Apart from this major hassle, we set off for America on June 21st, from Glasgow and Edinburgh via London, as Lindsay had landed a deal with British Airways, giving us all an allowance of 3 bags each. Bill Fleming brought his Baritone in a new hard case and other musicians not carrying so much hand luggage kindly carried the various extra instruments. We landed in New York and met our coach to take us to the hotel. The driver got lost. The first night was free so most of the musicians went to hear music at New York’s most famous jazz clubs. For me, I went to have dinner at Kurt Elling’s house on Central Park West and I made sure to buy this connoisseur an excellent bottle of wine.
The next morning, Calum and Lindsay went to pick up the bass at David Gage’s place, while the rest of the orchestra ventured down town, in blazing heat, to New York University. Their facilities were top class, grand piano, drum kit, music stands and good acoustics, what else could you want? Dr. Dave Schroeder could not be more accommodating. I was very impressed with tenor saxophonist Joel Frahm’s playing and he quickly gained fans in the band for his blistering improvisations.
After the first three hours rehearsing we took a break and Brian Kellock, Alyn Cosker, Tom MacNiven and I went for some lunch across the street, where we sat outside enjoying then sun. Alyn and Brian thanked me for my contribution to setting up the tour, which meant a lot to me. After the second 3 hour session I headed with my golf clubs to Grand Central Station, where I took a train an hours ride north of the city to meet my friend Bill Evans. We went straight to a driving range to practice for the next day. It’s always great hanging with Bill hearing his stories of Miles and talking about the golf swing. Next morning was the day of our first concert in New York City at the Iridium but first I had time to squeeze in an ultra-early round of golf with Bill. I was gracious in defeat, as he beat me on the 18th hole when I hit my drive out of bounds – entirely, my fault for not judging the end of the fairway. Afterwards, Bill drove me back to NYC where I joined the guys for the sound check.
The club had kindly put on food for the orchestra so we ate, changed into our tuxedos and played the 1st of 2 full concerts to a rather stellar audience, which included Kurt Elling, Randy Brecker and Bill Evans. I’m sure some of the musicians were intimidated but we all had fun. The end of the set included my reworked version of ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, which I had rewritten especially for the trip, condensing the 53 minute work into 24 minutes; changing many passages, backgrounds, re-voicing the whole piece for 3 trombones instead of 4, deleting the guitar and incorporating its phrases, and eliminating all the sections that bugged me since 2006. The shows were a great success and the musicians managed to keep their energy up against the jet lag. Next morning, was our first day in Avatar Studios. We walked the few long blocks across the avenues and into the hallowed ground where many great legends have recorded. There, waiting outside, was my old friend Paul Thorburn from Bishopbriggs, who I hadn’t seen for 13 years. He had won the Fuji photographer competition earlier in his career and was now living permanently in New York. Paul agreed to shoot the sessions for a third of his normal fee, as did many of our guest stars. The studio was set up perfectly by our engineer James Farber with all microphones, chairs, stands, headphone mixers, etc., all in place. Unlike the studio in Glasgow, the previous month, where they had set nothing and we had to wait 4 hours before recording anything, and when you’re paying by the hour it’s not so funny to wait.
First up, was Randy Brecker, who we all knew from the Michael Brecker Celebration tour, was to record Geoffrey Keezer’s beautiful arrangement of John Coltrane’s ‘Dear Lord’. It was clear from the beginning of the session that the musicians were slightly nervous but they eased into the job as time ticked on. Pianist David Kikoski, who I had gone to Berklee with, was our other featured guest and played three wonderfully improvised introductions to this song. Randy nailed a cracking solo at the end of the tune.
I had first met Mike Stern in 1983 when I lived for a week in NYC below his apartment with my school-mate’s father who was an influential man on the jazz scene, and we’d sit-in with Mike at the 55 Bar. Stern, however, blew everybody away with his outstanding playing on Fred Strum’s arrangement of Marcus Miller’s ‘Splatch’, and his over-the-top personality traits had everybody in stitches of laughter. By this time I could sense Alyn Cosker was really loving it, as he got to rock-out and play duets with Stern. The arrangement features Stern taking two solos like Coltrane does in ‘Transition’ and there’s some great writing behind the first improvisation leaving the second for some amazing interaction.
Drummer Clarence Penn had recorded several of my records and had even toured the UK with my band. Here, with the SNJO, he was featured in an arrangement of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Pinocchio’ by 18 year old, Jacob Mann, from LA, a student of Peter Erskine. His chart featured other guests: Michael Dease on trombone and Joel Frahm on tenor saxophone, two astounding players that left their imprinted duly on the session.
My dear friend Kurt Elling was last up, on the first day, and he had chosen to tackle ‘Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love’ by Charles Mingus; a tough melody that I heard Gary Burton play hundreds of times with Makoto Ozone when I was in the band. I had recorded the song in 1998 with Kenny Barron and found it to be particularly challenging, especially the phrasing and harmonic progression, so I knew Kurt was pushing himself on this one with all the leaping and its range. I had arranged the song in consultation with Kurt over a few weeks and we were happy with the outcome but to hear it recorded and able to hear all the inner parts was a revelation. His voice is majestic on the track, which also featured my only playing on the recording; a solitary 16 bars. We started at 10.00am and finished the first day at 1.00am. Lindsay had made sure we were all watered and fed throughout the day, as most of us hadn’t seen daylight.
To be continued...in Part Three.
For more information visit Tommy Smith's website & the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra
To purchase albums visit Spartacus Records. Click the album covers to read our reviews.
As well as his work with his own band and the collective Trio with Arild Anderson and Paolo Vinaccia, Tommy Smith is the founder and artistic director of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. Since its formation in 1995, under Smith’s direction the SNJO has performed repertory works by Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, and celebrated the work of Gil Evans and his associations with Miles Davis. The orchestra has also commissioned arrangements and original works that have been performed by some of the leading jazz musicians from all across the globe, including Makoto Ozone, Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano and Branford Marsalis.
Not content with this, in 2013 Smith realized his ambitious plan to take the SNJO on tour in the United States and Canada, and whilst there the orchestra spent two days in New York’s Avatar studio, and the resulting album, American Adventure shows once and for all that the SNJO are now a force to be reckoned with on the international stage.
Smith is quite rightly proud of the orchestra’s considerable achievements, and what follows is Tommy’s own words on how the tour and recording came about.
“Everything began to roll on the lush green fairways of Oak Hill Country Club golf course back in June 2011, while I was in the USA touring with Arild Andersen. I recall walking up the 8th fairway with Rochester Jazz Festival director John Nugent, muting the idea that the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra would be an ideal band to play at his festival; I then slipped him a couple of SNJO recordings, we then putted out and went to get our sandwiches that our playing partner, Marc Iocona, had ordered from using the phone in the tree, as you do, next to the 9th tee. A month after the Rochester Festival had finished Nugent emailed me to say he’d love to have the SNJO come over and play in 2012. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get the financial support in place necessary to fly over that year, so I took my small group Karma to tour USA and Canada with the help of Nugent and an old friend, Joel Chriss, who manages many of my US friends, and while playing Rochester Jazz Festival, I had time to tee it up again, early one morning, with Nugent and ascertain if he still wanted the SNJO to come over, as the SNJO were now in a better financial position. He said yes and gave me advice on expanding the tour to other jazz festivals in Canada.
Upon my return to Scotland in July 2012 I set to work to coordinate a short SNJO tour of the USA and Canada. Writing to over 30 festivals, the first to commit to the tour were Rochester, Toronto and Ottawa. I gave the task of finding a New York concert to agent, Joel Chriss. Dizzy’s Jazz Club, where I had just played with Karma didn’t have a free date; although, Lindsay, our manager, found out we could hire the place for the price of a luxury car. No thanks. Birdland, Blue Note and numerous other places were all dead ends. Lindsay enlisted the Andrew Carnegie Society but they ended up wanting more from us then we could give. Joel finally, after much deliberation, found an opportunity for us to play the Iridium Jazz Club; a place I knew and had a good reputation.
Lindsay then went in search of a rehearsal space, an acoustic bass and more practical things like hotels and coach hire. She had great success getting a space for us to rehearse at New York University and talked the director of jazz music, Dr. Dave Schroeder, who knew me from the old days when I used to sit-in with Jaco Pastorius at the Blue Note and Randy Brecker’s club Seventh Avenue South, into hosting a concert for us.
I was still in conversation with Montreal Jazz Festival about the sixth and final date, but they were much harder to convince and the director was unsure we could pull off a concert in the spectacular venue he had in mind for us. John Nugent and I managed to persuade him with conjecture, videos and CDs. It wasn’t until we played Montreal in June 2013 with 12,000 people cheering us on that I fully understood exactly what he meant.
After most of tour fell into place, I suggested to the SNJO board that while we’re in New York City, we don’t we make a record and invite some of America’s greatest musicians, since we’re on their doorstep. As we still had recording funds and Lindsay had made considerable saving elsewhere a green light was given to me. I then proceeded to get in touch with many of my friends in the business. Gary Burton, Dave Holland, Chris Potter, Jerry Bergonzi, Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts, John Patitucci, Clarence Penn, Joe Locke, Dave Liebman, Randy Brecker, Bill Evans, Dave Kikoski, Mike Stern and Kurt Elling. Seven of these fourteen musicians were available for the two dates I had booked at Avatar Studios, a place I knew well. The engineer I hired was my old colleague James Farber, who had recorded many of my records at Avatar. So we were in trusted and capable hands, all we needed was music to record and a well-rehearsed orchestra able to cope with the pressures of such an intimidating job. I also, wanted to hire a saxophonist to sit and play my parts, as I didn’t want to make the same mistake of playing and producing at the same time, as I did on the Bobby Wellins session we did a month earlier in Glasgow. So I called an old friend of mine, Donny McCaslin and he could only record one day, so he suggested Joel Frahm for the other day. I didn’t know Joel personally but his playing was excellent on the various recordings I’d heard. My plan was to give Donny and Joel my solo improvisations and all written parts so I could concentrate on producing the session. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice, the thing you really want to do for the good of it all.
Unlike most countries I visit, America is especially difficult to enter as a worker due to their strict immigration concerns. John Nugent kindly offered to pay and deal with the visa petitions for our whole entourage, which included 15 musicians, manager and live-sound technician. Unfortunately, for everyone, except me, all the SNJO had to visit the US embassy in London to be interviewed early in the morning. This process, not only involved, everyone completing a tedious 10 page application, telephone interview, traveling to and staying in London but leaving their passports for a week, plus paying for the privilege. American artists coming to Scotland only need to give Lindsay their passport information and everything else is taken care of; a very unfair system, making traveling to America with a large entourage challenging and expensive.
Apart from this major hassle, we set off for America on June 21st, from Glasgow and Edinburgh via London, as Lindsay had landed a deal with British Airways, giving us all an allowance of 3 bags each. Bill Fleming brought his Baritone in a new hard case and other musicians not carrying so much hand luggage kindly carried the various extra instruments. We landed in New York and met our coach to take us to the hotel. The driver got lost. The first night was free so most of the musicians went to hear music at New York’s most famous jazz clubs. For me, I went to have dinner at Kurt Elling’s house on Central Park West and I made sure to buy this connoisseur an excellent bottle of wine.
The next morning, Calum and Lindsay went to pick up the bass at David Gage’s place, while the rest of the orchestra ventured down town, in blazing heat, to New York University. Their facilities were top class, grand piano, drum kit, music stands and good acoustics, what else could you want? Dr. Dave Schroeder could not be more accommodating. I was very impressed with tenor saxophonist Joel Frahm’s playing and he quickly gained fans in the band for his blistering improvisations.
After the first three hours rehearsing we took a break and Brian Kellock, Alyn Cosker, Tom MacNiven and I went for some lunch across the street, where we sat outside enjoying then sun. Alyn and Brian thanked me for my contribution to setting up the tour, which meant a lot to me. After the second 3 hour session I headed with my golf clubs to Grand Central Station, where I took a train an hours ride north of the city to meet my friend Bill Evans. We went straight to a driving range to practice for the next day. It’s always great hanging with Bill hearing his stories of Miles and talking about the golf swing. Next morning was the day of our first concert in New York City at the Iridium but first I had time to squeeze in an ultra-early round of golf with Bill. I was gracious in defeat, as he beat me on the 18th hole when I hit my drive out of bounds – entirely, my fault for not judging the end of the fairway. Afterwards, Bill drove me back to NYC where I joined the guys for the sound check.
The club had kindly put on food for the orchestra so we ate, changed into our tuxedos and played the 1st of 2 full concerts to a rather stellar audience, which included Kurt Elling, Randy Brecker and Bill Evans. I’m sure some of the musicians were intimidated but we all had fun. The end of the set included my reworked version of ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, which I had rewritten especially for the trip, condensing the 53 minute work into 24 minutes; changing many passages, backgrounds, re-voicing the whole piece for 3 trombones instead of 4, deleting the guitar and incorporating its phrases, and eliminating all the sections that bugged me since 2006. The shows were a great success and the musicians managed to keep their energy up against the jet lag. Next morning, was our first day in Avatar Studios. We walked the few long blocks across the avenues and into the hallowed ground where many great legends have recorded. There, waiting outside, was my old friend Paul Thorburn from Bishopbriggs, who I hadn’t seen for 13 years. He had won the Fuji photographer competition earlier in his career and was now living permanently in New York. Paul agreed to shoot the sessions for a third of his normal fee, as did many of our guest stars. The studio was set up perfectly by our engineer James Farber with all microphones, chairs, stands, headphone mixers, etc., all in place. Unlike the studio in Glasgow, the previous month, where they had set nothing and we had to wait 4 hours before recording anything, and when you’re paying by the hour it’s not so funny to wait.
First up, was Randy Brecker, who we all knew from the Michael Brecker Celebration tour, was to record Geoffrey Keezer’s beautiful arrangement of John Coltrane’s ‘Dear Lord’. It was clear from the beginning of the session that the musicians were slightly nervous but they eased into the job as time ticked on. Pianist David Kikoski, who I had gone to Berklee with, was our other featured guest and played three wonderfully improvised introductions to this song. Randy nailed a cracking solo at the end of the tune.
I had first met Mike Stern in 1983 when I lived for a week in NYC below his apartment with my school-mate’s father who was an influential man on the jazz scene, and we’d sit-in with Mike at the 55 Bar. Stern, however, blew everybody away with his outstanding playing on Fred Strum’s arrangement of Marcus Miller’s ‘Splatch’, and his over-the-top personality traits had everybody in stitches of laughter. By this time I could sense Alyn Cosker was really loving it, as he got to rock-out and play duets with Stern. The arrangement features Stern taking two solos like Coltrane does in ‘Transition’ and there’s some great writing behind the first improvisation leaving the second for some amazing interaction.
Drummer Clarence Penn had recorded several of my records and had even toured the UK with my band. Here, with the SNJO, he was featured in an arrangement of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Pinocchio’ by 18 year old, Jacob Mann, from LA, a student of Peter Erskine. His chart featured other guests: Michael Dease on trombone and Joel Frahm on tenor saxophone, two astounding players that left their imprinted duly on the session.
My dear friend Kurt Elling was last up, on the first day, and he had chosen to tackle ‘Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love’ by Charles Mingus; a tough melody that I heard Gary Burton play hundreds of times with Makoto Ozone when I was in the band. I had recorded the song in 1998 with Kenny Barron and found it to be particularly challenging, especially the phrasing and harmonic progression, so I knew Kurt was pushing himself on this one with all the leaping and its range. I had arranged the song in consultation with Kurt over a few weeks and we were happy with the outcome but to hear it recorded and able to hear all the inner parts was a revelation. His voice is majestic on the track, which also featured my only playing on the recording; a solitary 16 bars. We started at 10.00am and finished the first day at 1.00am. Lindsay had made sure we were all watered and fed throughout the day, as most of us hadn’t seen daylight.
To be continued...in Part Three.
For more information visit Tommy Smith's website & the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra
To purchase albums visit Spartacus Records. Click the album covers to read our reviews.