Kevin MacKenzie's 'Vital Signs'

Vital Signs was born out of a Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award received in 2001 by Kevin MacKenzie and was recorded at ‘Castlesound Studios’ in Pentcaitland during December 2002.

The musicians

Kevin has worked with musicians in jazz and folk for a number of years and his original idea was to write a piece of music which drew on the talents of musicians from both genres.  Amongst those folk musicians who Kevin chose to work with for his Creative Scotland project was Simon Thoumire, Aidan O'Rourke and Chris Stout.

The Jazz musicians were all people whom Kevin had worked with regularly in one form or another, the most regular being the Bancroft twins Phil and Tom in the critically acclaimed ‘Trio AAB’.  Other jazz musicians involved in the project were Tom Lyne, Martin Kershaw and Chick Lyall.

The project

Once the line up had been decided Kevin set about writing without any strict plan of where the music would go, “I was just giving myself time to compose and the music on the CD is the end result”.

Vital Signs has played at Bath Jazz Festival, the London Jazz Festival, the Edinburgh International Jazz and Blues Festival and a live concert that was broadcast on Radio3 Jazz.  Since the CD was released in June 2004 it has been very well received and featured as CD of the week in ‘The Guardian’, CD of the week in ‘The Observer’ as well as being nominated as amongst the top five of the Month in ‘The Observer’ June 2004.

To hear a clip of Vital Signs from the album 'Another New Horizon' visit our Showcase. For more information on on this project and others visit the Kevin MacKenzie website.  The CD 'Another New Horizon' can be purchased from Caber Music and the Scottish Music Centre.

Kevin MacKenzie's 'Vital Signs' project was supported by the National Lottery through the Scottish Arts Council.