Bill Evans/Scottish National Jazz Orchestra: Beauty and the Beast review – thumpingly powerful jazz concerto

Since its birth in 1995, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra has steadily matured into a big band fit to grace any stage in the world, regularly featuring international jazz stars as guests. Former Miles Davis saxophonist Bill Evans takes the lead role in this powerful jazz concerto composed by orchestra founder Tommy Smith – following the story of Beauty and the Beast, but with a darker, Jekyll-and-Hyde spin. Drummer Alyn Cosker’s thumping backbeat launches an inventive opening collision between Evans’ capriciously Wayne Shorteresque soprano sax reflections and variously smoochy, scampering and slamming rejoinders in Smith’s score. Film-noirish smokiness turns to free-jazz burnups; snappily riffing episodes trigger Evans’s fierce, staccato tenor-sax marathons; an almost Stan Getzian sax romanticism unfolds against superb writing for low brass and shivery, trilling reeds. Evans is occasionally inclined to bombast (it would have been interesting to hear a version by David Liebman, for whom the suite was originally written), but Tommy Smith’s Mingus-meets-Stan Kenton scoring is wonderful.