Gateshead International Jazz Festival, like much else on Tyneside,
has been shaped by the existence of The Sage. With its
contrasting performance spaces and vast open public area, linked
by an indoor street, the festive feeling in the venue over the
weekend was one of participation and inclusion. As I arrive, a fine
youth band called Rocket Science are setting up for their
performance on the concourse and just before I leave a large
number of amateur singers, who have just finished a vocal
invention workshop, share their skills on an un-selfconscious
perambulation through the waiting, drinking and eating audience.
Scottish musicians have always been an important part of the
Sage’s work – Tom Bancroft’s Kidsamonium began life here and
this year trumpter Ryan Quigley and saxophonist Paul Towndrow
have been schooling resident youth ensemble Jambone – but the
Scots contribution to this year’s event was on another level
altogether. This was serendipitous, because the venue was also
bidding farewell to one of those who brought about the
construction of the splendid Norman Foster building, Andrew
Dixon, who takes up his post as chief executive of Creative
Scotland at the beginning of May. He moves north fully aware of
just how healthy Scottish jazz music currently is.

The Caledonianinvasion concluded with a concert by the Scottish
National Jazz Orchestra, playing the double bill of Tommy Smith’s new
arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, featuring pianist
Brian Kellock, and the music of Buddy Rich, showcasing drummer
Alyn Cosker, which has already been seen in Scotland (and half of
which is at Perth Festival in May). Various SNJO stalwarts could be
seen in other guises over the weekend, playing music of the widest
possible range of styles. As well as Towndrow and Quigley’s work,
the SNJO leader was also helping young musicians with a
masterclass on Sunday lunchtime.

Towndrow and Quigley are also half of Brass Jaw, a quartet
completed by tenor player Konrad Wiszniewski and the baritone of
Allon Beauvoisin, who tore up the Sage’s newest space, St Mary’s
Church next door. Mobility is essential to the work of Brass Jaw
and the foursome explored every corner of this heritage building,
from the nave to the apse. They make a big noise (and in Quigley’s
case often very highly pitched too) as well as a virtuosic one, but
they are chiefly great fun. Towndrow’s arrangement of Sting’s
Walking on the Moon is a case in point: it is a starting point for
some superb improvisation but always keeps a toehold on the
utterly familiar and is as much about the talents of four individuals
as the ensemble sound.

Stu Brown’s Raymond Scott Project was a mini-festival in itself.
The drummer’s band, including Martin Kershaw and Tom McNiven
of the SNJO, has gone far beyond its original remit of playing the
1930s music of the composer whose work was appropriated for
Warner Brothers cartoons. This performance included portions of a
film about the composer made by his son Stan Warnow and
featuring Hal Willner, Don Byron and DJ Spooky, as well as
animation made the previous day by young people at BALTIC next
door. Most impressively it built on the group’s superb recreations
with new arrangements of Scott’s compositions, including his later
ground-breaking electronic music, re-imagined by Kershaw, and a
superb funked-up rescoring of cartoon classic The Penguin by Tom
McNiven. This project is now exploring areas just as forwardlooking
as Raymond Scott was in his own day.

Star rating: *****

(photo by Mark Savage)