When cellist Shirley Smart talks about improvisation, she isn’t speaking only about music. “Improvising teaches you to take ownership of your sound, your mistakes, your ideas,” she says. “It’s a way of thinking, a way of composing in real time.”
Smart, one of the UK’s most distinctive cross-genre musicians, has now become St John’s College’s first Jazz Musician in Residence – a landmark appointment for a College already internationally celebrated for its choral tradition. For Smart, who has spent her career blending classical training with jazz and Middle Eastern influences, the new role feels like a natural next step. “It’s really exciting,” she says. “Anything that brings the unpredictable and exhilarating presence of jazz into the musical life of a College is a great thing.”
Her journey to this point has been anything but conventional. “My interest in jazz started at Guildhall when I kept hearing all the noises in the basement and thought, that sounds fun,” she recalls with a laugh. “At first, I couldn’t find a way into it at all as a classical string player.”
That way in came, as she puts it, ‘by a long series of accidents’. What began as a one-year stay in Jerusalem turned into a decade that transformed her musical identity. “I was playing Schubert string trios in a bar one night,” she says. “This character came up to me and asked if I was interested in playing some Moroccan jazz. I had no idea what that was, but I said yes.”
The experience opened up an entirely new world. “The band was a mix of North African jazz musicians,” she explains. “Through that group I got into Middle Eastern music. They sent me to this place in Ein Kerem – the International School for Creative Music – which was basically a little white hut in a forest run by this old saxophone player, Arnie Lawrence, who’d played with Dizzy Gillespie. He’d start playing and guide us through. It was a really nice way into improvisation for me.”
“Improvisation is the height of musicianship – that integration of theory and practice”
One night, Lawrence decided to test her. “He made me sight-read a John Coltrane solo with the band,” she says. “Then a couple of weeks later, during a concert in front of maybe 200 people, he came on stage and took the music away. I just remember having this moment of absolute panic, and then something clicked. I started listening differently. It completely changed the way I played.”
Back in the UK after 10 years in Jerusalem, Smart brought that open, hybrid sensibility with her. She has since performed with leading figures in British jazz and teaches classical, Baroque and jazz improvisation at the Royal College of Music. “It’s a shame that improvisation disappeared from classical music,” she says. “It was always part of the tradition. For me, improvisation brought together all the things we learn theoretically, but in a very practical way. It’s the height of musicianship – that integration of theory and practice.”
Her influences reflect that breadth. “In jazz, I’ve been really inspired by Omar Avital, because his music brings all the Middle Eastern influences into a jazz context in such a well-balanced way,” she says.“Classically, I love performers like Stephen Isserlis or Martha Argerich, where it sounds as if they’re composing the music as they play it. I like it when composed music sounds improvised, and improvised music sounds composed.”
It is straight-ahead jazz, however, that remains one of her deepest loves. “I love the harmony. I love jazz piano,” she says. “There’s something about the harmony and swing feel that is so potent and so powerful. I really love that. It is a spontaneous music.
“Having said that, you have to know the repertoire as well – all jazz musicians have spent hours in the practice room learning. Learning to improvise in that context is a different test than it is classically. Having been inside both worlds, I understand the amount of work that goes into being a really good jazz musician.”
What draws her most is the freedom within structure. “You have so much choice,” she says. “The more work you’ve done, the more language you have, the more choices you have to make. Even though there are conventions, you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. I love that element – that a piece could come out very, very differently every time.”
“You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in a performance or in life and that’s the point”
Now, as she begins her residency at St John’s, Smart is focused on making jazz accessible to everyone, not just experienced players. “I’d like it to be as inclusive as possible,” she says. “There’s small-group coaching for those who already play jazz, and workshops for people who just want to explore improvisation. I’m also happy for people to just listen, because that can be a way in to enjoying jazz too.”
She’s planning to collaborate with the College’s Music Society and hopes to regularly turn one of the College’s rooms into ‘a little jazz club’ for student performances. “Jazz is a very broad church,” she says. “It stretches into improvisation more widely. There’s so much academic and historical writing about it too, it’d be nice to make that available to students who want to go deeper.”
Smart’s enthusiasm for the role is infectious, but her outlook is quietly philosophical. “Improvisation teaches you to listen, to trust your instincts,” she says. “You don’t know exactly what’s going to happen in a performance or in life and that’s the point. You have to work with what comes.”
For St John’s, her appointment marks the start of a new musical chapter. For Smart, it’s simply a continuation of the journey she began in that Jerusalem bar. “Jazz is about communication and trust,” she says. “You can’t do it alone. That’s what I want to bring here – the joy of jazz, improvisation and creative music-making accessible to everyone.”
