The vitality and diversity of jazz music in Scotland – as well as the contribution made to covering that story by this newspaper – were recognised at the third annual Scottish Jazz Awards, held last night at the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh.
Cleverly timed to follow a highly successful Glasgow Jazz Festival, which saw a 30% increase in box office for the main concerts at the Old Fruitmarket, and on the eve of this year's Edinburgh International Jazz and Blues Festival, which has appearances by Dr John, Manhattan Transfer and Kyle Eastwood, the awards have quickly established themselves on the Scottish music calendar.
Saxophonist, bandleader and professor of jazz at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Tommy Smith was the only winner of two of the awards, picking up Album of the Year for his small group recording KARMA, and the Education award in recognition of his hard-won establishment of the RCS course.
The Herald's Rob Adams, who has been reporting on the Scottish jazz scene on these pages for two decades following a career on the promotional side of the business, won the Jazz in the Media award. His first reviews from this year's Edinburgh event will appear in Monday's paper.
The Vocalist award was won by Glasgow's Carol Kidd and Instrumentalist by Julian Arguelles, fresh from performing at the World Saxophone Congress in St Andrews.
The International performer was singer Kurt Elling, who is at the Edinburgh festival, following acclaimed concerts with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra in Scotland and Europe.
Experimental trio NeWt won the Jazz Ensemble category and that band's guitarist Graeme Stephen was recognised for Innovation with his soundtrack to F W Murnau's silent classic Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.
Guitarist Martin Taylor won the Live category and bassist Euan Burton was this year's Rising Star.
The veterans were also rewarded, with a Lifetime award to bassist Ronnie Rae, progenitor of a brood of Scots jazzers, and a Services to Jazz award to George Duncan, jazz advocate, dapper emcee and board member with the SNJO.
Last night's ceremony was hosted by jazz pianist and singer Ian Shaw and the awards are organised by the Scottish Jazz Federation and concert promoter Jazz International and supported by Creative Scotland.
SJF director Cathie Rae said: "The term jazz covers a vast range of musical styles, from early jazz in New Orleans and Chicago as played by Louis Armstrong, through the big bands of Duke Ellington and Count Basie and the 1940s revolution of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie on to today, where folk, rock, funk and free improvisation join all that's gone before."
Jazz International's founder, singer Todd Gordon, added: "Importantly, these awards highlight the riches Scotland has across the many jazz genres.
"Our congratulations go to all nominees, finalists and, of course, our winners for demonstrating the extraordinary musical talent that is thriving in Scotland."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article