corto.alto + friends: MADE IN GLASGOW

Celtic Connections @ Glasgow Barrowland

Saturday 18th January 2025

Common misconception: corto.alto is a band. You’d be forgiven for thinking so. It’s a snappy name for a band and there’s a whole bunch of them on stage.

In actual fact corto.alto is one guy.

Sort of.

One guy and a bunch of others. Who are all on stage and and making a glorious racket that is filling a sold-out Barrowland Ballroom right up to the rafters.

Allow me to explain. For the past half-decade or so Liam Shortall has been leading the charge of the recent jazz revival in Glasgow with his brainchild corto.alto (“Short-Tall” is Corto-Alto in Italian).

A musician and composer of considerable talent, Liam writes and arranges the tunes for corto.alto, most recently to Mercury Music Prize-nominated effect on his debut long-player ‘Bad With Names’.

But no man is an island, no matter how groovy. If you have been to any corto.alto gig or frequented their superlative club night Glitch 41 you’ll recognise a rotating crew of semi-permanent band member and special guest players, the swingin’est rogues gallery in town.

Opening with what could be considered their Big Tune ‘Slope’, Liam leads the group through select cuts from ‘Bad With Names’, his outstanding trombone work front and centre. Through ‘Latency’, ‘xoxoxo’ and the towering ‘Mechanisms’, every guy on stage gets the shot to show off their absurd skills.

Flanking Liam in a sax-sandwich there is the ever-present, ever-cool Mateusz Sobieski to his right and the fur-clad funk mountain that is Harry Weir to his left. Providing the backbone are Luca Pisanu on bass and James Mackay on guitar. Rounding out the line-up are, in this humble music junky’s opinion, two absolute world class musicians; (also Mercury-nominated) Fergus McCreadie on keys and Graeme Costello on skins (probably the best live drummer I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen Jimmy fucken Chamberlin).

Liam’s brand of funk and soul-inflected jazz allows each character plenty of room for extended face-melting solos before bringing it all back for full-band somehow chant-able (even though they’re instrumental) choruses. After a quick detour into a Kendrick Lamar cover (might have been ‘Die Hard’, you’d need to ask a bigger Kendrick fan), Liam brings on his mentor, Scottish National Jazz Orchestra maestro Tommy Smith for a rousing rendition of ‘Chubby’, an off cut from ‘Bad With Names’ thankfully given a second chance at life on the companion album ’30/108′.

The band finish off the set with a couple of treats for the OGs from their incendiary set of ‘Live From 435’ EPs. ‘Squonk’ sees Harry Weir and Graeme Costello trade jazzy blows with each other, Harry creating noises with his sax no human should be able to, while the triumphant ‘3 Years On’ recalls the transcendental experience no doubt many in the audience remember from that cathartic Hug and Pint gig all the way back in the immediate post-lockdown days. It’s amazing to see how far this group of gifted individuals have come.

Images by Garry McLean – @mayfoldunderquestioning