Barely out of primary school when they formed, High Level Hot Club have been a regular fixture on the islands’ live music scene for the past six years. We caught up with them to hear about how they’ve benefited from the abundant cultural opportunities the community offers.
Shetland’s music scene may be steeped in its fiddle traditions, but in their own way teenage gypsy jazz quartet High Level Hot Club are every bit as true to the islands’ rich musical heritage.
The good-natured, instantly likeable four piece were first put together by their tutor Brian Nicholson, a member of legendary Shetland band Hom Bru and widely regarded as one of the islands’ finest ever guitar players.
Consisting of a trio of guitarists – Daisy Anderson, Lulu Johnson and Artur Vavilov – and double bassist Tabitha Johnson, the band’s sound is heavily shaped by their idol, Django Reinhardt.
While on the face of it a group of twenty-first century teenagers coalescing around admiration for a French musician in a niche genre who passed away in the early 1950s may seem unlikely, Reinhardt was in fact a touchstone influence on Shetland music.
'Peerie Willie' Johnson, a renowned and hugely influential Shetland guitarist, pioneered a playing style combining elements of swing and jazz that was shaped by listening to Reinhardt and Eddie Lang in the 1930s.
The connection is not lost on Daisy, a nimble and eye-catching guitarist herself, and she says that when Brian introduced the style of music “I think we all fell in love with it”.
“It is not dissimilar to the way guitarists have accompanied fiddle players in Shetland,” she says. “We use the same style of chord playing here that people like Django made popular. Guitarist Peerie Willie then brought this to Shetland with his music, so it is more familiar than you might assume.”
To begin with the group played instrumental pieces before starting, as Lulu’s confidence in her singing voice grew, to pursue a more song-based direction.
High Level Hot Club are now under the equally capable wing of Brian’s son Arthur Nicholson, a Danny Kyle award-winning singer-songwriter whose band First Foot Soldiers recently enthralled a 5,000-strong audience at Victoria Pier as Lerwick hosted the 2023 Tall Ships Races.
“The genre we play is gypsy jazz, but it’s the way Django did it,” says Daisy. “He took jazz standards from America and adapted them into his style of music using guitars, bass, fiddles. So that’s kind of what we’re doing now, taking jazz standards that we like and adapting them for three guitars and a double bass.
“Arthur, our teacher, helps a lot with the arranging, but we pick stuff that we like and suits Lulu’s voice…” “And some funky solos that Daisy can play!” Tabitha chips in.
The folk festival audience is a group of people who are going to be loving whatever happens on that stage.
The band, whose name is a nod both to Reinhardt’s Quintette du Hot Club de France and the High Level Music shop and teaching centre where they learned to play, last year recorded and released their self-titled debut album.
Showcasing many favourites from their live repertoire, it includes jazz standards first popularised by the likes of Nina Simone and Louis Armstrong, such as My Baby Just Cares For Me and What a Wonderful World, emphasising the increasingly outstanding vocals of Lulu - her voice carrying an emotional weight belying her 17 years.
“I think it’s really enjoyable to do gypsy jazz, the swing of it is really fun, and just turning the songs into our own,” says Lulu. “If I want to sing it differently I can, there’s so much flexibility.”
Tabitha says the band have “come to realise how important we all are as individuals – if Artur [rhythm guitarist] is gone it feels so empty, and you don’t realise how much you rely on that as part of a rhythm section”.
The band have put in years of hard practice and have been rewarded with countless live performance opportunities – not least thanks to the volume of love and care Tabitha’s mother Lisa Johnson, a mainstay of the Shetland Folk Festival committee, has put into supporting them.
She has organised regular young musicians’ showcases where High Level Hot Club have been joined by dozens of their peers in talented traditional groups such as Skelburn and Kirmirren at various venues over the past five years.
They’ve also enjoyed regular slots at the folk festival and supported award-winning musical kindred spirits Rose Room, from Edinburgh, on two visits to the islands.
Taken in tandem with the expert instrumental tuition they have received, the band are unanimous that Shetland is a “fantastic place to learn to play music”.
“The folk festival audience is a group of people who are going to be loving whatever happens on that stage, and it’s so nice to feel that support from them,” Tabitha says, with Daisy adding that the festival is “a home for a lot of different styles of music, so I feel we fit in”.
I thoroughly enjoyed it and was so glad there was something like that available in Shetland.
Tabitha, a year or so older than her bandmates, has already completed an HNC in music at Shetland College UHI: “I thoroughly enjoyed it and was so glad there was something like that available in Shetland.”
Daisy, who along with the others has just completed high school, is about to take the same course before hopefully going on to the Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow.
Lulu, meanwhile, is off to study music at Aberdeen University. Artur is the one exception: while music will “always be a big part of my life”, he is taking a course in accounting.
Whatever the longer term future might hold, it seems a pretty safe bet that the High Level Hot Club will get the gang back together on Shetland stages again next summer: “We’re not technically finished – I don’t think we ever would be,” Lulu says.
“If we’re ever in the same space we’ll want to meet up and do some playing,” Daisy adds. “Over the years we’ve built up a connection that means you can just jump back in and go for it again.”
