Jazz Orchestra

The Caird Hall, Dundee, February 23

When Tommy Smith takes a break to talk to The Courier, he is writing the final 50 bars of his new composition.

Tommy, founder and director of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, is preparing to present the world premiere of a jazz interpretation of Sergei Prokofiev’s well-known piece Peter and the Wolf, complete with a Scots twist.

This will be performed in Dundee next week alongside another wellknown suite of zoological music that has been given a fresh interpretation by leading Japanese pianist Makoto Ozone – also a world premiere.

Former Scots Makar Liz Lochhead has written a narration for Peter and the Wolf in Scots and this will be delivered by Scottish actor Tam Dean Burn against the backdrop of Tommy’s music.

Tommy says: “I’m a fan of Prokofiev. He’s one of the big composers I love because every time I hear his music it excites me. I have heard many versions of Peter and the Wolf and my favourite is probably Bernstein’s because he understands how the text fits in with the music.”

“When you have an actor like Tam who is so incredible live you want to give him something that’s going to make his performance have many arcs.”

When it comes to the instrumentation, Tommy has had to think creatively for some of the parts.

He explains: “The hunters are normally portrayed by the timpani, but we have drums; the wolf is the french horns but we have trombones; Peter is usually represented by the strings, but in this performance Makoto will play Peter on the piano.”

The second interpretation is a new imagining of Camille Saint-saëns’ Carnival of the Animals by Makoto Ozone. Tommy, who has been playing with Makoto for more than 30 years, says one of the reasons he decided to marry the two performances is the fact they both contain animals.

He says: “Makoto has been touring The Carnival of the Animals with various symphony orchestras and I thought since he knows it so well, why not ask him to rearrange it for jazz orchestra and reimagine it?”

“As you arrange music, you are adding and changing and recomposing a lot of it – it’s not as easy as people might think.

“So when Makoto does his Carnival of the Animals, he has all his melodies, but he has to develop them and put his harmonic and rhythmic signature on it.”

Makoto holds a professorship at Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo and is also a popular jazz broadcaster with Japanese station J-wave 81.3.FM.

He has been working on his interpretations alone, but now Tommy has had a chance to listen, his summation is simple: “It’s going to be a lot of fun!”

Accompanied children can attend the performance free of charge.

Tommy Smith, founder and director of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra.