(Press release)
Award-winning Scottish pianist Brian Kellock
spearheads the UK launch on 30th October of New Zealand-based Thick Records,
with two of the label’s three initial releases featuring the Edinburgh-born,
Glasgow-based Kellock’s talents.
The launch is built around Think About It! - the long overdue follow-up to Kellock and his trio’s 2002 BBC Jazz Award-winning album, Live at Henry’s – and includes two albums by label owner and drummer, John Rae.
Rae’s trio, with Kellock and Kiwi bassist Patrick
Bleakley, features on Where the Wild
Clematis Grow, whose six tracks include three Rae originals and a highly
individual take on Artie Shaw’s Nightmare. Rae, who moved to Wellington in the
late noughties, also celebrates his Scottish roots on Uncouth and Without Form, with a new band formed in the cultural
slipstream of his popular and critically acclaimed Celtic Feet.
Kellock, who starred with the Scottish National
Jazz Orchestra at Middlesbrough Town Hall last October, has earned an
international reputation for his work with, among other notable names,
saxophonists Herb Geller, Joe Temperley and Scott Hamilton, trumpeters Warren
Vaché and Red Rodney, singer Sheila Jordan and Australian multi-instrumentalist
James Morrison.
His long-time partnership with fellow Scot,
saxophonist Tommy Smith has produced three duo albums and work with the
Scottish National Jazz Orchestra that includes Rhapsody in Blue Live, for which Smith rearranged the Gershwin
classic especially for Kellock as the featured soloist, and In the Spirit of Duke, with Kellock
taking the Ellington role.
The piano-bass-drums format, and particularly his
trio with Rae on drums and Kenny Ellis on bass, has a special place in
Kellock’s affections, however.
“I’ve known John since around 1982 or 1983 and we
got on really well from the start, both on and off-stage” says Kellock. “We’ve
played in each other’s bands and worked together in other people’s bands and
have always had a good musical understanding.”
With bassist Ellis, Kellock and Rae formed the
rhythm section of the John Rae Collective, a group that featured trumpeter
Colin Steele, saxophonist Phil Bancroft and guitarist Kevin Mackenzie and that,
along with their contemporary, Tommy Smith, represented a resurgence in
Scottish jazz during the mid to late 1980s.
For John Rae, Kellock is the ideal musician to lead
his label’s launch.
“Brian’s such an extraordinary musician and yet,
after all this time, he’s still an artist deserving wider recognition,” he
says. “It’s no wonder that people like Herb Geller or Sheila Jordan have made
him their accompanist of choice. But for me, what makes him so special to work
with, apart from his outrageous virtuosity and fantastic knowledge of the jazz
repertoire, is that I always know he’ll be committed to the concept, regardless
of the consequences.”
The Thick Records releases are all available to
download-only. Rae thought long and hard about the “to CD or not to CD”
question and arrived at the decision to go digital when he realised that he had
no CD slot anywhere – neither in his house nor in his car or computer – and
found that a lot of people are in the same situation.
“I have boxes and boxes of CDs in my garage that I
don’t play but I’ve probably listened to the music on most of them through
downloading or streaming,” he says. “It boils down to the music, not whatever
the music’s stored on, being what’s important and I’m happy that the standard
of the music we’re making available is high.”
For further information, see https://www.thickrecords.co.nz/
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