GENRES of music have always ebbed and flowed in popularity, often dictated by specific moments in pop culture, individuals breaking through into the mainstream or even as a result of whole political movements.
In recent years, there has been extensive chat around the resurgence of jazz in the UK, thanks in part to the work of artists like Mercury Prize-winning quintet Ezra Collective, saxophonist Nubya Garcia and drummer/composer Moses Boyd.
But as jazz returns to the forefront of public consciousness, it’s worth noting that any resurgence isn’t a result of a reinvention of the genre’s traditional tropes, but a fresh take inspired by innovations in sound, technology and even cross-genre pollination.
As a new generation of listeners come into the fold, so too do a new generation of leaders in the jazz scene, and crucially, in regions all over the UK.
“I would say if you’re not familiar with the jazz scene, forget everything you know about jazz,” Liam Shortall tells me on a sunny afternoon in Glasgow.
“I’m not saying you should forget all that great history, especially Black American music – it’s so important,” he continues.
“But I think the average person will think about jazz, and they’ll think about how it’s people shushing each other in jazz bars, and people wearing suits and drinking cocktails, and it’s an elite thing that only rich people enjoy. But you just have to come to one of my gigs to realise that’s not the case anymore – it’s grown so much. It’s music for everyone.”
With his corto.alto project, Shortall is one of a number of Scottish musicians redefining jazz for a new generation, fusing elements of hip-hop, dub and more into a sound that is uniquely his own.
When we meet, he’s just about to embark on a trip to Austin where he’s performing at SXSW and it feels as if we’re catching him in a moment of calm before the inevitable storm.
It’s a lot for a project that wasn’t necessarily meant to have any kind of longevity. But it makes sense when you go back to Shortall’s beginnings in music and the serendipitous way in which he arrived within the world of jazz.
“I started playing guitar when I was about nine and I just really fell in love with it,” he recalls.
“Then at school, we got to choose our top three picks of instruments and a reserve. I chose tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, drums, and my reserve was trumpet. But I was off ill when they handed out the instruments, and when I got back, the only one left was a trombone.”
Despite his initial disappointment, he stuck with it and ultimately became one of the few from that school cohort who pursued music professionally. At 16, Shortall’s decision to study jazz at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) felt like a natural one.
“All my mates that I was in youth bands with who were maybe a few years older than me had done the same thing – studied at RCS. It was kind of like a rite of passage.”
But moving to Glasgow was about more than just studying – being immersed in the dynamic local music scene meant being able to nurture the part of him that loved composition and production too.
“I suppose it’s what I’m known for playing,” he says of the trombone, “But I think for me, I’ve always been more interested in making records. The fact that I didn’t love the trombone as much as, say, I loved the guitar when I picked it up, has ended up making me a bit more spread out in terms of my interests. Bit of a Jack of all trades but master of none.”
Looking around at the numerous instruments in the room, as well as having witnessed him play a number of these instruments on stage to an impressive degree, it’s very difficult to view Shortall as a master of none.
But what he’s saying makes sense; there was always less of a draw to being a jazz instrumentalist, as is maybe the case when you study within the jazz tradition, than making records and experimenting with the skills that are acquired while learning. Corto.alto has undoubtedly been born out of an eclectic mix of influences, while still having a solid grounding in jazz.
“I love UK garage and I love jungle as much as I love Count Basie and classic jazz recordings,” Shortall explains.
“So I think what comes out is always a bit of a mishmash and that’s all you can do as an artist – just soak as much in as you can, and spit stuff out. The music I like making is just an aggregate of everything that I’ve absorbed.”
After graduating from the RCS and after years of playing in other people’s bands, Shortall finally started his own project when he was 23, though it was a reluctant start.
“I’d always written music on the side, and kept it to myself,” he says.
"When you’re surrounded by musicians, and you’re playing music in different people’s bands all the time, it’s quite terrifying doing your own thing. It was always in the back of my mind that I’d like to start something by myself, but I never did out of anxiety and fear of what everyone else would think of it, which is stupid.”
At the time, he was living above a bar on Sauchiehall Street and was fortunate to be in a position where he could make music all the time and make noise into the wee hours.
“I ended up writing four tunes that became Live From 435, my first release. And then it eventually became a year of five volumes of four tunes. My idea was just to explore my own composition and so if you listen to a lot of that music, it’s all over the place – one track is dub jazz, or reggae-inspired, and then some of it’s punk, and some of it’s hip-hop.”
Over time, corto.alto evolved into a vehicle for his wide-ranging musical ideas, leading to the Not For Now EP and then Bad With Names in 2023, the latter of which was what earned him the Mercury Prize nomination. As Shortall’s first full-length album, Bad With Names was praised across the board for its forward-thinking approach to jazz and its skilful fusion of live instrumentation and electronic production.
“I spent ages writing Bad With Names,” he says of the album’s process. “I didn’t want it to feel like an imitation of someone else. I think it took so long because I made sure every second of it was true to me.
“I obviously didn’t expect the album to go as far as it did,” he continues, reflecting on the Mercury nomination.
“I mean, you have to pay money to submit it to the Mercury Prize. And at the time, I was like, ‘this is such a waste of money’. But then six months later, they called us and said it was nominated.”
The entire experience was incredible, but also very surreal. “To be on that list with Charli xcx and these seminal albums that have changed culture … I think for any British artist, the Mercury Prize is something that they have in mind for some point in their career. A dream of mine I would have never told anyone was to be nominated for it, maybe on my fifth album, but to get it on the debut album was just absolutely insane.”
After Bad With Names and the many other accolades that followed, Shortall challenged himself further with 30/108, a massive project that involved selecting 30 tracks from 108 demos and releasing them daily over a month.
“It was an insane amount of work. We were touring at the same time, and I was finishing tracks in hotel rooms and vans. It’s not something I’d do again but I think it was such a great experience as a palette cleanser, to get all of this old music out. Even now, when I listen to it, I’ll hear things that are wrong with the mix, and it doesn’t matter. It was an exercise in creativity and I love that album probably more than I love Bad With Names because it still sounds so fresh to me.”
Speaking about 30/108, Shortall’s passion for production and the process of building the foundations is evident but is there a big difference between Liam the composer, working away in the studio, and Liam the bandleader up on stage?
“I would say, first of all, I always prefer the studio,” he explains.
“I know the live experience is amazing and I do love that too, but I’ve always been such a hermit in the studio. I love the moment where you make something that you just happen to put a bass line on top of or some drums, and then a sample, or whatever chord sequence, and you’ve made something you’re so excited about. That’s where my excitement in music is at its highest; with the birth of an idea.”
Despite his preference for the studio, experiencing corto.alto in a live setting as an audience member is special. One of the defining aspects of this is the deep camaraderie among the phenomenal musicians that Shortall invites in.
“I think my favourite collaborators are Fergus McCreadie, Graham Costello, Mateusz Sobieski – the people I play with. Speaking to the audience after shows, people notice the brotherhood we have on stage. I think for me, what’s important within music, especially music where you’re improvising, is that freedom to take risks with your band. We’ll do stuff where we’re intentionally trying to make each other make mistakes. That’s the level of play we have within the band.”
Shortall's approach to performance has been shaped by his early busking days, as well as his experience playing with funk and soul collective Tom McGuire & The Brassholes.
“We played in Swansea once and there were, like, four people there. But Tom made sure those four people had the best experience. They’ll probably remember that gig for the rest of their lives. I just thought it was so interesting because I know my instinct, and so many other jazz musicians’ instinct is, if you drive to Swansea for a gig and four people show up, you’re gonna be raging.
“But flipping that on its head, and just this mastery of showmanship that Tom had – it taught me that the arrogance of jazz, where you’re like, it’s about the music, it’s not about the performances – it’s a load of shit, to be honest.”
Shortall has kept this firmly in mind when performing as corto.alto, and it’s something that was at the heart of the Made in Glasgow gig he curated for Celtic Connections in January.
“Playing the Barrowlands is out of the picture when you start a jazz project,” he notes. “It’s something I never really thought we’d be able to do. But I wanted to celebrate Glasgow and the music fans who have supported me.”
The sold-out, mini-festival at the legendary Glasgow venue featured corto.alto alongside rising rapper Bemz, singer-songwriters Pippa Blundell and Becky Sikasa, trumpet player and producer JSPHYNX and DJ Rebecca Vasmant.
As well as being a hugely successful night, Made in Glasgow placed jazz at the top of a multi-genre lineup, attracting an array of music fans in the process.
“I think it shows that jazz is not really a genre in itself anymore,” Shortall says when asked why jazz is so compatible with such disparate genres. “It’s kind of just an approach and a language to making music.”
“The best thing that’s happened is the diversity of experience – jazz in Scotland isn’t just men anymore. That’s what’s really helped the scene grow and become better. The more diversity of experience we have, the more interesting the music is. It’s still not perfect, obviously, but I think the benefits have been so obvious.”
For Shortall, when a scene becomes like a club, it will naturally begin to eat away at itself. And this is an element of the Glasgow music scene that he feels needs to be protected.
“In other cities where I’ve been to jams, some musicians try to play egotistical games of discouraging others, and in those places, it’s treated with respect. But in Scotland, if anyone’s like that, it would just be embarrassing.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that attitude of being Scottish and having that level of checking yourself all the time, and I think sometimes it can be a negative thing where people don’t want to celebrate their wins. But the trade-off is completely worth it, where it’s so not cool to be a dick because you have done this one thing for longer than others have. That’s what’s magical about Scotland – this really low threshold for bullshit.”
Looking ahead, there’s plenty on the horizon for corto.alto, including new music and summer festival shows like the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival on July 19. For his next album, Shortall hopes to take a more collaborative approach.
“Within the world of my own music, I tend to hold onto it quite tightly. So I’m really excited for the next album to just let go of that and get more people involved from the writing stage.”
With his unconventional approach and deep connection to Glasgow’s vibrant scene, it feels as though Shortall is not just redefining jazz but expanding its possibilities. But with this rapid ascension, is there naturally an extra level of pressure on the creative process?
“I’d like to think not,” he says sincerely.
“I think I make music because it’s just what I do and I’d be doing it even if I lived in the woods. And if there was a cataclysmic, world-ending event and I was just on my own, I think I would still be making music. I’m not really good at anything else.”
