Ben Shankland Trio, Birmingham Jazz, 1000 Trades, Jewellery Quartet, Birmingham, 12/09/2025.

Ben Shankland – piano, Ewan Hastie – double bass, Jonathan Silk – drums

I first became aware of the playing of the young Edinburgh born pianist and composer Ben Shankland when Jazzmann contributor Colin May enjoyed a performance by his trio, featuring bassist Ewan Hastie and drummer Chun-Wei Kang at the Mad Hatter in Oxford 2023.

Colin attended as a paying customer but enjoyed the trio’s playing so much that he ended up penning a short, but very favourable, review, which can be read here.
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/ben-shankland-trio-the-mad-hatter-oxford-17-10-2023

Colin’s piece certainly whetted my curiosity, as did hearing Shankland’s playing on the album “What’s Wrong With Rain?” by the Birmingham based bassist and composer Thomas Marsh,  a very impressive recording released in 2023.

I finally caught up with Shankland in person when he played with a Birmingham based trio featuring bassist Josh Vadiveloo and drummer Dom Holyoake at the 2024 Brecon Jazz Festival.The performance took place on the open air Bishop’s Garden Stage and featured Shankland playing an electric keyboard and adopting an electric piano or ‘Rhodes’ sound.  I was able to enjoy around half an hour of an engaging set that included a mix of Shankland originals and imaginative adaptations of jazz standards. I was suitably impressed by what I saw and wrote a few paragraphs about it as part of my Festival coverage, which can be found here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/features/article/saturday-at-brecon-jazz-festival-09-08-2025

In return Ben enjoyed what he read and kindly invited me to cover one of the gigs on his still ongoing trio tour. This presented the opportunity of seeing him perform on a ‘proper’ acoustic piano and I selected the Birmingham date, the closest one to me.

The show took place in the upstairs room at the 1000 Trades pub in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quartet, the regular home of promoters Birmingham Jazz, who present jazz events there on a weekly basis. The organisation will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2026, an impressive achievement.

I’m grateful to Ben for inviting me to cover the performance and to my friend Justin McKeon for giving me a lift to the venue – I’ve reached the age where I don’t much care for driving in large cities like Birmingham any more.

At 1000 Trades Shankland was playing the venue’s upright acoustic piano in the company of his regular trio, with Ewan Hastie on double bass and Jonathan Silk at the drums. As Phil Rose pointed out when introducing the band this was the first time that Birmingham Jazz had presented an all Scottish trio. However both Shankland and Silk are currently based in Birmingham, making this something of a ‘hometown gig’ too, as evidenced by the large audience turnout, including a number of Shankland’s contemporaries from the Jazz Course at Birmingham Conservatoire.

Such is the maturity of Shankland’s writing and playing that it’s hard to believe he’s still a student. He’s now in his fourth year at Birmingham after a year out studying at the Jazz-Institut in Berlin.

Born into a musical family his influences include classical and choral music (from his father), the 80’s pop that was loved by his mother and subsequently jazz and improvised music. The young Shankland learned orchestral bassoon in addition to piano but it was his growing interest in jazz that led him to specialising on piano. His jazz piano influences go back as far as Earl Hines but also include contemporary pianists such as Fred Hersch and Sullivan Fortner. His piano tutors have included Alan Benzie and John Turville while other mentors include saxophonist Tommy Smith and multi-instrumentalist Percy Pursglove.

Already considered to be something of a rising star Shankland has already appeared at a number of the UK’s leading jazz festivals and has opened shows for fellow jazz pianists Jason Rebello and Pablo Held. At Edinburgh Jazz Festival his trio was augmented by saxophonist Harben Kay and vocalist Ben MacDonald at a sold out performance.

Shankland also continues to perform in the classical world and has collaborated with the 2022 winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year Award, percussionist Jordan Ashman. He was also the featured soloist in a performance of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” by the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra.

Shankland is currently the BBC Radio Scotland Young Jazz Musician of the Year and has twice been nominated at the Scottish Jazz Awards. His trio also features another award winner, Hastie having been crowned the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year in 2023.

These two prodigious young talents were joined by the more experienced Silk, who graduated from Birmingham Conservatoire in 2011 and remains based in the city. In addition to his work as a drummer he is an also an acclaimed composer, arranger, promoter and educator, a real stalwart of the Birmingham jazz scene, who has released a number of albums under his own name. His 2016 release “Fragment”, a very impressive large ensemble recording, is reviewed here;

The current tour by the Shankland trio places the emphasis firmly on the leader’s original compositions. The programme commenced with “Looking Glass”, a piece that had been played at Brecon, albeit in a very different form. An unaccompanied piano intro featuring Shankland’s arpeggios developed into a highly rhythmic and fully integrated trio performance as the sounds of double bass and drums were added. This was contemporary piano trio jazz of the first order with Shankland and Hastie both delivering fluent and imaginative solos on their respective instruments. Silk gravitated between brushes and sticks as the music required and was featured himself towards the close. A brisk, dynamic start.

The trio displayed a gentler, more lyrical side to their music on “The Clearing”, a highly melodic Shankland original that reminded me of a Keith Jarrett ballad. Again Silk moved between brushes and sticks according to the dynamics of a piece that included a melodic double bass solo from he excellent Hastie followed by a more expansive piano solo from the leader.

Shankland began writing the evocative “Dark Pavements” during his Exchange Year in Berlin, before completing the composition in Birmingham. This was introduced by Silk with a carefully constructed solo drum feature featuring the sounds of mallet rumbles and cymbal scrapes and shimmers, to which Shankland added shards of glacial sounding piano. As the piece unfolded it evoked images of empty streets in the small hours of the morning, with Hastie’s bass assuming the melodic lead above the piano arpeggios and the percussive rumbles, scrapes and shimmers. Hastie’s extended bass solo was followed by a more forceful piano solo from the leader as the momentum began to build, finally releasing the mounting tension prior to a quieter resolution.

An excellent first set concluded with the dynamic complexities of “Axis”, an original ushered in a percussive passage of unaccompanied piano, subsequently joined by bass and drums. The introduction of the rhythm team helped to give the music a more conventional jazz swing, with Shankland’s piano sounding vaguely ‘Monk-ish’. As the piece progressed the grooves alternated between conventional swing and something more contemporary, with propulsive bass lines and busy and dynamic drumming fuelling the leader’s bravura piano soloing. Further features from Hastie and Silk, followed by a collective outro, ended the first half on an energetic high, with the highly supportive audience responding enthusiastically.

The second set began with the only standard of the evening, “I’m All Smiles”, a Michael Leonard tune that has previously been recorded by pianists Hampton Hawes and George Cables. It’s obviously a favourite of Shankland’s and was also performed at Brecon. An unaccompanied piano intro led into a piano and double bass dialogue with Silk’s hand drumming subtly added. It was only when Silk switched to sticks that the momentum of the music began to build as the piece progressed through more conventional jazz solos from Shankland and Hastie.

The Shankland original “Blue Flame” saw the trio upping on the ante on a dense and highly interactive piece that saw a series of vibrant piano and drum exchanges, with bassist Hastie, standing centre stage, acting as ‘referee’. The trio then adopted a more conventional jazz groove for Shankland’s solo. This was a high energy offering that was well received by the audience.

By way of contrast the delightful ballad “Rays” (as in the sun) again presented a gentler, more lyrical side of the trio with its extended solo piano intro, lyrical and melodic bass solo and Silk’s delicate and sympathetic brush work.

“Instinct”, which had been segued with “I’m All Smiles” at Brecon was ushered in by the combination of double bass and drums with Hastie and Silk establishing a powerful groove punctuated by shards of piano melody. This provided the platform for exceptional solos from Hastie and Shankland. The bassist is a virtuoso soloist and is also capable of handling the trickiest of rhythms. He exhibits an impressive musical maturity and that Young Musician of the Year award is very much deserved. The same can be said of Shankland, whose buccaneering solo again saw him bouncing ideas off Silk, who rounded things off with a typically dynamic drum feature.

To close Shankland decided to send us on our way quietly with “Petals”, an original composition dedicated to Billy Strayhorn, who regularly used flower imagery when titling his own tunes. This was a delightful ballad featuring an expansive, but flowingly lyrical, piano solo from Shankland, sympathetically supported by double bass and by a variety of drum sounds (brushes, mallets, sticks).

This was the sixth show of a ten date tour and the music sounded thoroughly ‘played in’ by the regular trio. Shankland hopes to record this music, preferably with this line up, and it’s very much to be hoped that he succeeds. This is music that deserves to be properly documented on disc and put ‘out there’.

Shankland impressed with the quality of his playing and his writing and in Hastie and Silk he had the perfect accompanists, effective and empathic foils but also great players in their own right. Both Shankland and Hastie are young musicians we are destined to hear a lot more of.

The tour continues with regular collaborator Chun-Wei Kang taking over at the kit for the Scottish dates as Silk has work and family commitments that will keep him in Birmingham.

The remaining dates on the tour are as follows;

Ashburton Arts
UK trio tour with Ewan Hastie and Jonathan Silk
16/09/25, 19:30
Ashburton Arts Centre, West Street, Ashburton, Newton Abbot, UK

 
Jazz at the Blue Lamp
UK trio tour with Ewan Hastie and Chun-Wei Kang
25/09/25, 20:00
The Blue Lamp, Gallowgate, Aberdeen, UK
 
The Jazz Bar
UK trio tour with Ewan Hastie and Chun-Wei Kang
26/09/25, 18:30
The Jazz Bar, Chambers Street, Edinburgh, UK
 
Basement Jazz Cafe
UK trio tour with Ali Watson and Chun-Wei Kang
27/09/25, 20:00
Basement Jazz Cafe, Bath Lane, Glasgow, UK
 
Ticket links to all shows at;
https://www.benshankland.co.uk/gigs

My thanks to Ben for speaking with me after the show and for verifying the set list. Thank you also to photographer Brian Homer for allowing me to use the accompanying image.

Catch these rising stars while you can. Bigger things await.

 

 

 

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