Norwegian bassist Terje Gewelt wanted his latest album, The Old Tree, to reach a wider audience than the jazz listeners his music usually reaches.
He didn’t expect to become the name on the lips of so many folk and Celtic music broadcasters around the world, however. And it’s due to a sound that was made in Edinburgh.
Gewelt, who has played on more than a hundred albums by musicians including former Santana drummer Michael Shrieve and the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s rhythmic powerhouse, Billy Cobham, called up his old friend, Edinburgh-born saxophonist Tommy Smith, when he started planning The Old Tree.
Smith and Gewelt were students together at Berklee School of Music in Boston in the 1980s. They formed the group Forward Motion, whose first two albums were released on Edinburgh-based Hep Records, run by former Portobello High School art teacher Alastair Robertson.
“Our careers went down separate paths after Forward Motion but we kept in touch,” says Gewelt, who studied bass guitar with the legendary Jaco Pastorius and double bass with the great Wolverhampton-born alumnus of Miles Davis’ band, Dave Holland.
“Tommy ended up playing with a friend of mine, bassist Arild Andersen. So I would see him over here in Norway with Arild and of course I was aware of all the recording and touring he was doing.”
When Smith went over to Gewelt’s studio in Nesbyen, two hours upcountry from Oslo, in June, it was to add what Gewelt describes as “his commanding sound on tenor saxophone and his great improvisations”.
Two tracks called for a different sound and Smith happened to have a tin whistle with him.
Although he’s known internationally as a saxophonist, and to a lesser extent for playing the Japanese shakuhachi flute, Smith has been playing tin whistle for many years.
In the late 1980s he played whistle when he and some other Scottish jazz musicians formed a folk band, the Giant Steppin’ Stanes.
One of the tracks that feature Smith’s whistle, Last Leaf Falling, has been the surprise choice of many jazz inclined radio presenters and interest in it has spread to folk and Celtic music shows.
“I was really pleased with the way the album turned out,” says Gewelt. “Tommy fitted in great with the other musicians – pianist Erland Slettevoll, drummer Erik Smith and myself – and I was able to feature the electric upright bass that I’ve been working with to create a personal sound.
“It’s very melodic music and I can understand how the folk music people have been attracted to it.”
