Jazz ace Tom takes on Miles Davis role

A Rutherglen jazz musician will step into some big shoes this weekend.

Tom MacNiven will be playing the part of music legend Miles Davis as the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra (SNJO) performs two classic albums this weekend in Perth, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The Glasgow gig, at the Royal Concert Hall, falls on International Jazz Day, Sunday, April 30.

Tom, who is from Woodside Avenue, has played trumpet in the SNJO for over 20 years.

As well as his SNJO work he has worked as a session musician, including appearing on countless albums and TV theme tunes and performing at most of the major festivals in the UK including Glastonbury, Reading and T in the Park.

The two works in this programme could not be more contrasting, more iconic, and more perennially popular as defining jazz of the 20th-Century.

Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess album in 1959 was radically re-written by Gil Evans in arrangements imprinted and voiced by the inimitable Miles Davis on trumpet.

They quickly followed that artistic success with Sketches of Spain, an album in which Evans turned Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez on its harmonic head, and Davis’ trumpet playing transformed Spanish folk melody into urbane jazz.

Tickets for the three concerts are available now, and visit www. snjo.co.uk for more details.