Liam Shortall, also known as corto.alto, has performed in some weird places during his ten year career.
“I was maybe 19. We were playing in this bar called Swing in Glasgow, which was a sleazy little jazz club. It was called Swing for, like, not the swing jazz reasons,” he tells me.
“We were playing, and then the whole ceiling – like those office ceilings that are little square panels – the whole frame of it just collapsed. No one got hurt, but we had to stop.” He shrugs. “We still got paid, so I didn't really care.”
Or the weddings he used to play as a teen, trying to make ends meet. “We would do three weddings a week for four years. We did the same woman's wedding twice. She got the same band, same venue. I've seen some things. Some of them are fun, and then some of them make you want to never, ever get married.”
Now 28, the jazz composer’s days of performing in off-beat venues are firmly behind him. He’s accrued a 2024 Mercury Prize nomination (for his debut album Bad With Names), has an ever-expanding fanbase and has even played a Glastonbury slot at West Holts, for which he was preparing when we spoke. And later this year, he’ll perform at Camden venue Koko.
Banish all thoughts of staid, traditional jazz; Shortall is one of a growing number of musicians sprucing up the genre. His own music includes elements of jazz, but he works in flavours of his hugely eclectic music taste: reggae, DnB, electronic music, and pretty much anything else he happens to be listening to.
His work – plus that of contemporaries like Ezra Collective, Yussef Dayes and Moses Boyd, as well as berlioz and Olivia Dean – are helping bring jazz to an ever-younger, trendier audience of Gen Z enthusiasts. Between 2023 and 2024, views of #jazz videos increased almost 90 per cent on TikTok, with #jazztok becoming a trend in its own right; in 2023, Spotify disclosed that 40 per cent of its jazz was being streamed by people under 30.
All of which is to say, the scene is booming right now. But Shortall’s been playing jazz (and honing his craft) for years. Born and raised in Dumfries, he picked up a trombone at a time when access to the arts was much easier than it is now.
“I know so many musicians that live in New York, in London and all across the world, that are from Dumfries and went to that youth band from when I was a kid,” he says, rattling off four other different youth bands and groups in quick succession. All of them were alive and kicking when he was a child; none of them exist today.
“I got a free trombone when I was 13, and I hated it, like every other 13 year old does, but if you aren't given opportunities, you're never going to be able to try things.
“It's so sad to see all these youth bands really struggling to get applications: it’s the obvious, inevitable result of cuts to music education. For me, music just changed my life and made me meet all my best friends. It’s been the best thing.”
With opportunities, Shortall thrived. He became the first ever trombonist to enroll in his jazz course at the University of Glasgow (“It's not even because it's difficult. It's just because there's no trombone players” he says modestly) and when he left, set about trying to make it into a career.
While he was trying to make ends meet, Shortall moved into Sauchiehall Street, above a club on Glasgow’s main clubbing thoroughfare – a blessing, he says, because he could “make as much noise as I wanted.” Hence the late night jamming sessions with his band, and with the reggae producers he lived with.
Here, corto.alto was born: a nu-jazz project that took traditional jazz and injected in different genres (Shortall took the name, which literally means “short, tall”, as a nod to his Irish-Spanish heritage). The band started with a Facebook page and a challenge to release 20 singles, one every three weeks, which, he says, should have been the end of it.
Several years later, here they are, still going, and still based in Glasgow. Which is just the way Shortall likes it: he sings the praises of the city’s low rents, its booming music scene, the many jam sessions its artists collaborate and develop their sound in.
Not that fame is going to his head. “Sometimes I get recognised in Glasgow, and it's really nice,” he says. “My ego likes it, but even the biggest jazz musicians aren't getting chased down the street or anything. So even if it went crazy, it’s still quite reasonable and manageable.”
With jazz booming like never before, why does he think it appeals so much to Gen Z? Maybe because the genre is becoming ever-less traditional: “I sometimes find some jazz alienating, and I'm a jazz musician,” he says at one point; he makes an effort to make his own music accessible to all.
But also, it’s just the way we listen to music these days. “There's a lot of bad things about streaming. I think it's ruined music, and it's devalued it in a lot of ways. Putting every song ever released on Spotify for the value of 10 pounds a month? It's an economic model that can’t work for the people who are making the music.
“But the flip side of that, I think, is really interesting, is when you think about how people consume music. Maybe 20 years ago, there were these gatekeepers: radio producers and the people who actually controlled who heard music, what music you heard.”
Now, he explains, we’re living in an age where so much of what we listen to is determined by algorithms (accurately: I first heard corto.alto’s music on an Electronic Jazz Spotify playlist).
“That means people have greater freedom to explore their own interests, which is increasingly leading them to sub-genres like electronica and folk.” And jazz: he cites the example of the Montreux Jazz Festival, and others, which “sell out every year, and it’s filled with young people. Now… all these genres that were quite underground are having their moment, and pop is having less of a moment.”
That’s not to say older people don’t enjoy his work, though. Yes, there were trendy young things in the audience when I went to see him at Glastonbury, but he talks fondly of an “80-year-old woman, who was one of my first commenters on any of my videos” and a “lovely lady called Catherine from Glasgow” in her 60s, who has been one of the band’s stalwart supporters.
With Shortall going from strength to strength, who’s he got on his list of dream collaborators? “Anderson .Paak,” he says immediately, citing the American rapper and artist.
“I think that would be amazing. I just love the way he makes music. I'd love to work with Stevie Wonder. He’s my favourite of all time. I mean, there's loads of people. Even in Glasgow, that are smaller artists that I’d love to work with.” Maybe Fred again.., I venture? “Maybe, but he needs to stop doing exclusive shows for influencers only.”
It’s a joke. But either way, Shortall’s got a lot on his plate, and he’s not taking any of it for granted.
“I think people think that there's like these like moments where [you get your] big break,” he says reflectively. “It's never really felt like there's been a big break, because I'm just always working on it. It's incremental little wins every day. And then when you look back, you're like, ‘Whoa, we've come so far.’
“I'm super dedicated to it, and I love making music, and I love doing gigs. If I was the last person on the planet, I know I would just be in this room making music for myself. And it's just because I love doing it.”
corto.alto plays Koko Camden on October 23; tickets at koko.co.uk. His new single Don’t Listen is out now
