Tommy Smith – The Sound Of Love (2000)
SACD Rip | SACD ISO | DST64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 7:32 minutes | Full Scans included | 2,73 GB
Genre: Jazz | Publisher (label): Linn – AKD 138
Saxophone virtuoso Tommy Smith reveals himself to be a consummate ballad player on this laid back selection of classics by two of the most justly celebrated composers in jazz history: Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.
The eleven classics contained on this recording – five by Ellington, four by Strayhorn and two collaborative pieces – include some of the loveliest songs to grace twentieth-century music. The cleverly chosen title track ‘The Sound Of Love’, written by Charlie Mingus in tribute to Ellington, is a rarely played gem.
Smith fully respects the two composers’ original intentions, whilst utilising shading, colour and texture to add a further dimension of warmth to these familiar themes. Made in New York, with many tracks recorded in just one take, the album peaked at #20 in the American Gavin Jazz Chart upon release.
Smith is accompanied by a trio of seasoned musicians: Kenny Barron (a six-time recipient of the Jazz Journalists Association ‘Best Pianist’ award), bassist Peter Washington and Billy Drummond on drums.
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Tommy Smith – Blue Smith (1999)
PS3 Rip | SACD ISO | DSD64 2.0 > 1-bit/2.8224 MHz | 61:51 minutes | Scans included | 2,51 GB
or FLAC(converted with foobar2000 to tracks) 24bit/88,2 kHz | Full Scans included | 1,22 GB
Scottish jazz saxophonist emerged in the early 1980s, moved on to create challenging works with major players.
Guitarist John Scofield has never had a problem interacting with saxophonists in a piano-less environment; anyone who admires the strong rapport that him and saxman Joe Lovano have enjoyed when there is no pianist on board can attest to that. So it isn’t surprising that Scofield and Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith prove to be a strong combination on 1999’s Blue Smith, which finds the two forming a piano-less quartet with upright bassist James Genus and drummer Clarence Penn. The only familiar song on this post-bop is “Amazing Grace”; all of the other selections were written by Smith, who keep things unpredictable and provides a variety of blues-influenced material for the quartet to work with. Scofield excels on everything that Smith throws his way, and that includes the funky “Rain Dance” and the angular “Dr. Sco,” as well as the Native American-influenced “Rain Dance” and the John Coltrane-minded “Touch Your Toes.” As the title indicates, Blue Smith is a Album with a lot of blues feeling; it isn’t an album in which Smith (who is heard on both tenor and soprano) plays 12-bar blues numbers exclusively, but it is an album in which Smith and Scofield never forget the importance of blues feeling. Blue Smith is among his strongest albums.
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Arild Andersen, Tommy Smith, Paolo Vinaccia – Mira (2013)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:02:53 minutes | 1,12 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM
Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen, Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith and Italian expat drummer Paolo Vinaccia made waves around the world with their award-winning debut recording, the much lauded concert album Live at Belleville. Mira, the trio’s studio follow-up, is a programme of soulful ballads and midtempo free-floating sound explorations, pairing Anderson’s muscular bass with Smith’s vaulting tenor in an exceptionally compelling blend. Most of the tunes on Mira are Andersen originals, though his bandmates also contribute material and there is an unexpected interpretation of Burt Bacharach’s Alfie, beautifully played by Smith here.
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Arild Andersen, Paolo Vinaccia, Tommy Smith – In-House Science (Live) (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 55:30 minutes | 621 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM
Norwegian master bassist Arild Andersen’s trio with big-toned tenorist Tommy Smith and powerhouse drummer Paolo Vinaccia is one of the most viscerally exciting jazz small groups of the present moment.
Its energies are arguably best captured in a live context, and here the three musicians deliver a characteristically smoking performance at the Villa Rothstein in Bad Ischl, Austria, recorded in September 2016. Their earlier concert recording ‘Live At Belleville’, was issued a decade ago to rave reviews and a shower of awards. “Absolutely and unreservedly marvellous” said BBC Music Magazine. “How often do just three musicians produce music as vast and panoramic in its scale and vision?” asked Jazzwise, amazed.
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Arild Andersen, Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, Tommy Smith – Celebration (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:01:45 minutes | 643 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM
Bassist Arild Andersen shines as the principal soloist in a celebration of music from ECM with specially-commissioned new big-band arrangements of well-known pieces by Dave Holland, Chick Corea, Trygve Seim, Jan Garbarek, and Keith Jarrett. The resourceful Tommy Smith adds powerful tenor solos, arranges Garbarek’s “Molde Canticle”, and directs the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra. Andersen’s composition “Independency” is a 16-minute highlight, in a sensitive and powerful arrangement by Mike Gibbs. Other contributing arrangers are Makoto Ozone, Christian Jacob, Geoff Keezer and Trygve Seim/Øyvind Bræke: all of them contribute sterling work, and their arrangements are likely to enter modern jazz’s big band repertory book. Recorded live at Glasgow’s Royal Conservatoire, “Celebration” is a highly attractive album for a broad listenership, and as a statement about music introduced by ECM will be of special interest to long-time followers of the label.
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Tommy Smith & BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra – Modern Jacobite (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24-bit/48 kHz | Time – 00:47:11 minutes | 535 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Master, Official Digital Download – Source: HDTracks | Digital Booklet | © Spartacus
Tommy Smith, the great Scottish saxophonist, composer, bandleader and educator, studied classical orchestration in the 1990s, and has played in plenty of challenging jazz/classical settings. But Modern Jacobite is his most ambitious journey yet, centred on an intricately woven three-movement symphonic work inspired by the Jacobite uprisings; it is bookended by a rapturous tenor-sax improvisation on Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise, and by Chick Corea’s famous Children’s Songs interleaved with Smith’s own Bairn’s Songs as personal variations on the same theme. The Jacobite pieces embrace violent, cinematic soundscapes for slewing brass and thundering percussion; deep cello themes that segue into pulsating tenor-sax ruminations; Scottish folk dances that become pipe-toned tenor jigs. There are seamless sprints into swing and fast-changing scene-shifts in which Smith’s sophisticated awareness of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s full potential testify to his long-honed musical class and attention to detail. Jazz/classical crossovers can be full of pitfalls, but this one is a triumph.
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