Award-winning organist brings top team to Ambleside

Peter Johnstone is the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s resident pianist. He has become used to receiving compliments from the top American players who regularly fly into Scotland to work with the ensemble.

Chicagoan singer Kurt Elling, who is widely recognised as one of the world’s leading jazz vocalists, was so impressed with Johnstone that he hired him to play some festivals last summer.

The New York-based vibes virtuoso Joe Locke went one step further. Locke suggested that if Johnstone were to form his own group, he should “make sure you ask me” to play in it.

So Johnstone took the hint but decided to abandon the piano for his other love, the Hammond organ.

“As soon as Joe mentioned he’d be interested in working with me I could hear the possibilities for vibes and organ,” says Johnstone, who won the Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the Year title in 2012 and went on to win the prestigious Peter Whittingham Jazz Prize with the band Square One three years later.

“It’s a relatively unusual instrumental combination but there are precedents such as the albums Bobby Hutcherson and Joey DeFrancesco made together that I really liked.”

Adding saxophone and drums, Johnstone composed an album’s worth of material and sent Locke his parts ahead taking the group into the studio. Now Johnstone is set to launch the album, Resistance Is Futile, on a tour that calls into Zeffirellis in Ambleside on Thursday, July 10 and includes concerts at the legendary 606 Club in London and at Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival.

“It’s fantastic to hear a musician as accomplished as Joe bringing my music to life,” says Johnstone.

“We’ll have Will Vinson, a great saxophonist who has worked with many of New York’s finest jazz musicians, and Alyn Cosker, an amazingly versatile drummer, with us on the tour, and I can’t wait to share the music from the album with the Zeffirellis audience.”