I really enjoyed The Silver Project a few years back when JazzMain put a celebration of Horace Silver numbers together.
I haven’t seen JazzMain since although this must be one of the hardest working quartets on the circuit, popping up at this and that in Scotland (and Ireland), and leader, my jazzy chum Nick Gould, finding every available opportunity to deliver some tenor madness – at home, in France and beyond.
I was brought up on a diet of early jazz – Jelly Roll Morton, Freddie Keppard, King Oliver, Johnny Dodds, Kid Ory. It was all my dad played if he got near the Bush Gramophone, apart from opera. So, a lunchtime with Brian Kellock, the unquestioned current supremo of Scottish jazz piano and the Tenement Jazz Band was going to unlock a box of nostalgia for me. It did.
Brian opened proceedings at this one-off gig at the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival 2019 in inimitable style with Put A Shine On Your Shoes, the ballad I’ll Never Be The Same melting into Slow Boat To China, and then a little entertaining chat for those of us old enough to remember Kia Ora and Woodbines. Then he left the stage.