Scots saxophonist Tommy Smith returns to his and some other jazz roots with his new album Karma as well as paradoxically making a perhaps inadvertently radical statement. He tours the music in Scotland in late June and later elsewhere (see below).
Karma
About the album Tommy Smith’s quartet includes pianist/keyboardist Steve Hamilton and drummer Alyn Cosker off his 2005 Forbidden Fruit album, but this no less brilliant successor is very different. New is Kevin Glasgow on six-string electric bass, and the lingua franca has become an amalgam of Scottish, Irish and Arab folk elements spiced with funk, […]
TORAH
About the album Tommy Smith leads one of Europe’s leading jazz orchestras in a personal and spiritual journey of discovery. Featuring the cream of Scotland’s thriving jazz scene, Torah is orchestral jazz at its most powerfully expressive. Originally written by Smith in 1999, for American saxophone giant Joe Lovano, the 2010 Torah recordings feature the […]
Rhapsody In Blue
About the album Leading European jazz saxophonist, composer and educator Tommy Smith boldly breaks new ground with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on ‘Modern Jacobite’, an exceptional recording featuring his symphonic work “Jacobite”, alongside personal re-imaginings of Rachmaninoff and Chick Corea. The centrepiece of this striking album is an evocative painting in music, ‘Jacobite’. Tommy […]