If you look at Tim Garland’s website it says he is playing as guest artist with the London Sinfonia on 13 February, at the Shetland Jazz Festival on 16 February, live on BBC Radio 3’s Jazz Line Up from Glasgow on 2 March, and in Milan (Italy), Brno (Czech Republic), Weiz (Austria), Halle (Germany), and Helsinki (Finland) with the mighty new band of Chick Corea, The Vigil. Are we lucky to have secured a performance here by such an international artist? You bet we are!
Tim has been playing with Chick Corea for quite some time. He was invited to play in the band of the great jazz legend, a profound accolade for a British jazz musician, and he has collaborated over many years in most of Corea’s projects. This new band is being flagged up as one of the truly innovative bands of the decade.
Tim has won several BBC awards for his small ensemble projects and delights in fusing together differing musical disciplines. Particularly familiar with the worlds of contemporary orchestral and jazz music, Tim is also adept in creating music in the studio using electronic and pre-recorded material. As well as Corea, he has formed lasting relationships with several internationally renowned musicians, often working onstage alongside them.
Tim Garland
Last year he worked with the UK National Youth Jazz Orchestra and they performed together at a BBC Prom in the Royal Albert Hall. Tim will be creating a similar event with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland Collective (the senior members of the orchestra) for a special Mareel performance on 16 February. This is a most innovative addition to the Shetland Jazz Festival, an internationally renowned artist working with young Scottish jazz musicians to create a new piece of music. It doesn’t get much better than that.At the Mareel concert, Tim will also be featured with his own ground-breaking band Lighthouse, which features Tim on sax, as well as a variety of other reed instruments, Gwilym Simcock on piano and Asaf Sirkis on drums and percussion.
Celebrating their signing to the prestigious German label ACT, the hugely successful Lighthouse are back with their original personnel after two years working on other projects. The newly invigorated trio punch deep into exciting groove-based tunes inspired Celtic rhythms.
Grammy winner Garland and Barclaycard Mercury nominated pianist Gwilym Simcock are two of the most outstanding composers of our time in both jazz and classical genres and are regarded as among the very best in the world on their respective instruments. With Asaf Sirkis playing a custom-built percussion set of frame drums, bass Udu, Hang drum and more Lighthouse exude a very special energy and excitement in performance.
"Sure-footed virtuosity, a dazzling standard" was how their performance was summed up in The Times, and Jazzwise was even more hearty in their praise of the sax player: "Garland is quietly, but quickly becoming one of the most important British jazz musicians in years."
Jeff Merrifield, director of Shetland Jazz Festival, is most enthusiastic about getting Garland to play in Shetland. He said:“I first engaged the young Tim Garland to play a gig at our Monkeys Jazz Club in Essex in the 1980s with his then new band Lamas. I have followed his career since then with great interest, the many collaborations with orchestras, his time with Bill Bruford and his celebrated work with Chick Corea, including a Grammy for his collaborative composition, New Crystal Silence with Corea and Gary Burton. This is a star jazz performer.”
Tim Garland can be seen at the Mareel on Saturday 16 February at 7.30pm with his own band Lighthouse and with the NYJOS Collective. There will also be some pieces performed by the young Shetland musicians of NYJOS created specially for the occasion. You can book tickets for this event via Shetland Box Office in Mareel & Islesburgh, over the phone on 01595 745 555, or online here. To see a list of all Shetland Jazz Festival events, please click here.
