Scottish National Jazz Orchestra & Makoto Ozone: Jeunehomme: Mozart Piano Concerto No. 9 K. 271

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Bill Fleming (bs)
Lorne Cowieson (t)
Ruaridh Pattison (as, ss)
Michael Owers (tb)
Konrad Wiszniewski (ts)
Chris Greive (tb)
Cameron Jay (t)
Tommy Smith (cond)
Tom Walsh (t)
Phil OÕMalley (tb)
Martin Kershaw (as)
Tom MacNiven (t)
Makoto Ozone (p)
Calum Gourlay (b)
Alyn Cosker (d)

Label:

Spartacus

September/2015

RecordDate:

26 April 2014

Classical-jazz crossovers are nothing new – but a drum solo in the midst of a Mozart piano concerto? The twain rarely find themselves in the same musical bed, that's for sure. But we've come to expect ambition and innovation from Tommy Smith's Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, and here the SNJO's regular sticksman, Alyn Cosker, gives his kit a good working-over in the third movement (marked ‘Rondo/Presto Be-Bop’) of this jazzed-up reimagining of Mozart's first masterpiece, the so-called ‘Jeunehomme’ piano concerto. For the most part, of course, it's Japanese jazzer Makoto Ozone who occupies the spotlight. He is responsible for the arrangement and orchestration, as well as for the playing of all of the very many piano notes. The ‘Jeunehomme’, as its title suggests, is a young man's work – Mozart wrote it when he was just 21 – and Ozone and his orchestral support team do everything to preserve the original's spirit of youthful exuberance, making the first movement swing, finding a suggestion of tango in the slow second and then discovering hints of proto-bebop in the final movement. It's an intriguing and highly enjoyable take on an eighteenth-century masterpiece.

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