Best known in the jazz world as the pianist and arranger behind the award-winning trumpeter Colin Steele’s success over the past twenty-five years and for his own acclaimed trio, Milligan is a musician of remarkable versatility.
As well as working with a prodigious list of jazz musicians, including Art Farmer, Scott Hamilton, Peter King, Joe Temperley and Charlie Mariano, he has featured with ace session guitarist Larry Carlton, percussionist Trilok Gurtu and Nashville gospel-soul legends the McCrary Sisters and has a parallel career in traditional music with international fiddle band String Sisters, Scottish folk orchestra The Unusual Suspects and singer-songwriter Karine Polwart. He also collaborated, as musical supervisor, with Mark Knopfler on the stage musical version of Local Hero.
The music on Momento resulted from meeting Italian bass and drums team Danillo Gallo and U.T. Gandhi on an international project with Colin Steele at Edinburgh Jazz Festival. Milligan enjoyed playing with the Italians so much that, when a Creative Scotland artists bursary allowed him to travel to Cavalicco in the Italian province of Udine, he booked three days in ArteSuono recording studio with engineer Stefano Amerio and invited Gallo and Gandhi to join him.
Over the two days, the trio recorded everything they played and with the expert recording of Amerio, who has worked on over forty albums for the prestigious ECM Records label, they finished up with twenty tracks, some completely improvised, some Milligan originals and some improvisations based on folk songs.
Momento features seven of those tracks, beginning with the slowly unfolding and deceptively titled Going Nowhere. The understanding between the three musicians is immediately apparent and as Milligan’s spare, melodic improvising, coloured by Gandhi’s astutely placed drums and cymbals, builds into a series of chiming chords, the concentrated atmosphere of the recording is established.
Parcel of Rogues is the first of two Scottish folk songs that lend themselves to upbeat grooving jazz treatments. The melody alternates between reflection and forthright forward motion and inspires energetic interplay between Milligan and Gandhi and a fiery bass solo from Gallo.
(There’s) Always Tomorrow features a superbly clear piano solo from Milligan as the mood changes from yearning to mobile and They Said It Was About You has something of the folk ballad about its construction, a song without words.
The retreat march by Pipe Major John MacLellan that the father of the Scottish folk revival, Hamish Henderson adopted for his stirring Freedom Come All-Ye anthem is carried here on a skipping, effusive jazz groove with notably agile, expansive and percussive piano playing from Milligan.
By contrast, Sandy’s 70th, the album’s one solo piano piece, is a tender waltz, a birthday tribute to Milligan’s father with echoes of Erik Satie.
Made in the Border closes the album with a smart, assertive melody initially taken up by Gallo but passed on to Milligan, who was indeed “made in the Borders” (near Hawick) and who adds conspicuous urgency in his closing jabbed piano chords.
Something changed for me over those few days in Italy – not so much in terms of my musical vocabulary or technique, but in terms of where the music comes from in performance, and allowing it to flow. As well as having great musicians and a great engineer to work with, the landscape around the studio is inspiring. When I arrived in Udine, I stood for a while on the balcony of my room and tried to take in the panoramic horizon that was the Alps. It was unexpected and breath-taking; particularly bathed as it was in the colours of a humid summer evening. A long way away – on so many levels – from the rolling hills of the Borders, where I grew up. But, for a moment at least, it felt like home. ~ Dave Milligan