Tommy Smith (saxophonist)

Tommy Smith
Photo shoot for Modern Jacobite
Background information
Birth name	Thomas William Ellis Smith
Born	(1967-04-27) 27 April 1967 Edinburgh, Scotland
Genres	Jazz, orchestral jazz, swing, classical, free improvisation
Occupation(s)	Musician, band leader, composer, educator
Instruments	Tenor saxophone, soprano saxophone, flute, shakuhachi, piano
Years active	1981–present
Labels	HepECM, Blue Note, Linn, Spartacus
Associated acts	Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra, Arild Andersen, Paolo Vinaccia
Website	tommysmith.scot

Thomas William Ellis Smith (born 27 April 1967) is a Scottish jazz saxophonist, composer and educator.

Early career

Smith was born in Edinburgh on 27 April 1967 to a Scottish mother, Brenda Ann Urquhart, and father, William John Ellis, whom he never met. Smith was brought up in the Wester Hailes area of the city, where he was encouraged by his stepfather, George Smith, an avid jazz fan and drummer in the Gene Krupa style, to take up the tenor saxophone at the age of twelve.^[1] When he was thirteen he attended a weekly jazz workshop under the direction of Gordon Cruikshank. He met pathologist and pianist Vincenzo Crucioli, who became a mentor. With drummer John Rae, the group won Edinburgh International Jazz Festival Best Group award in 1981. At fourteen Smith won Best Soloist. He attributes much of his success to the Crucioli family. Under clarinettist Jim O'Malley and pianist Jean Allison at Wester Hailes Education Centre, Smith was soon performing around Edinburgh and Scotland with his quartet with John Rae. In 1983, at sixteen, he recorded his album Giant Strides with a trio featuring Rae. During the same year, he won a scholarship, assisted by a fund-raising program organized by his music teacher, Jean Allison, to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston.^[2] At Berklee he formed the band Forward Motion with Norwegian bassist Terje Gewelt, Canadian drummer Ian Froman, and Hungarian pianist Laszlo Gardony. The band recorded two albums, Progressions and The Berklee Tapes.

Into the Blue

With a recommendation from Chick Corea, Smith joined Berklee vice-president Gary Burton's group with bassist Steve Swallow, pianist Makoto Ozone, and drummer Adam Nussbaum, touring the world and recording the album Whiz Kids for ECM.^[3]

In 1989, when he was twenty-two, Smith signed with Blue Note, which released his album Step by Step. Burton produced the album with a band consisting of John Scofield (guitar), Eddie Gómez (bass), and Jack DeJohnette (drums). Three more albums followed for Blue Note: Peeping Tom (1990), Standards (1991), and Paris (1992). During this period Smith hosted a series of BBC-TV specials called Jazz Types in which he performed with guests such as Tommy Flanagan, Gary Burton, Chick Corea, Bobby Watson, Arild Andersen, Hue and Cry, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Smith recorded and toured with Hue and Cry, a duo of brothers Pat and Greg Kane with American vibist Joe Locke, percussionist Trilok Gurtu, and Arild Andersen. Smith also examined classical composition, leading to his first saxophone concerto, Unirsi in Matrimonio, and a suite for saxophone and strings, Un Ecossais a Paris.

Out of the Blue

In 1993, Smith joined Scottish label Linn Records. His albums, Reminiscence (1993), Misty Morning and No Time (1994), Azure (1995, with Jon Christensen, Lars Danielsson and Kenny Wheeler), and Beasts of Scotland (1996) were released. Writing in Playboy magazine, Neil Tesser noted of Beasts of Scotland that "Smith's artful writing makes the ensemble sound like a petite Philharmonic."^[4] The Sound of Love followed. Recorded in New York City in September 1997 with Kenny Barron (piano), Peter Washington (bass), and Billy Drummond (drums), it focused on the Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn songbook. Gymnopedie: The Classical Side of Tommy Smith (1998) was recorded with his regular duo partner, classical pianist Murray McLachlan. The disc included music by Satie, Bartok, Grieg, and Chick Corea, and Smith's Sonatas No. 1 "Hall of Mirrors" and No. 2 "Dreaming With Open Eyes" based on Michael Tucker's book of the same title. Returning to jazz and to New York the following year, Smith then recorded his final album for Linn, Blue Smith, with John Scofield and his regular rhythm section of bassist James Genus and drummer Clarence Penn.

Alone at Last

Having premiered his 3rd Saxophone Concerto with the Orchestra of St. John Smith's Square at Chelmsford Cathedral in May 1998, Smith went on to produce singer Jeff Leyton's debut album with the City of London Philharmonic. Leyton, who is Smith's uncle, sang on Monte Cristo, the saxophonist's commission for the combined forces of the Paragon Ensemble and his own sextet, with text by Edwin Morgan. It was first performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in September 1998.

Smith wrote the music for a play, Kill the Old, Torture the Young, which was produced at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. He contributed tenor and soprano saxophone excerpts respectively to the movies Complicity and The Talented Mr. Ripley, and premiered another large-scale composition, Sons and Daughters of Alba, incorporating Scottish folk music and musicians as well as text by Edwin Morgan at the Glasgow International Jazz Festival in July 2000.

Spartacus

In September 2000, Smith established Spartacus Records. The first album was called Spartacus and was released in February 2001 with pianist Barron, bassist Genus, and drummer Penn. That was followed by Smith's solo album, Into Silence, recorded in Hamilton Mausoleum on 30 October 2001, and by a recording by Smith's quartet of ten specially arranged Christmas songs. Subsequent Spartacus albums include Evolution with Joe Lovano, John Scofield, John Taylor, John Patitucci, and Bill Stewart; duo albums with pianist Brian Kellock; Miles Ahead with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and guest trumpeter Ingrid Jensen; Smith's solo album Alone At Last; and Forbidden Fruit by his all-Scottish quartet.

In April 2001, he was invited to take part in televised concerts in Switzerland with Benny Golson, Vincent Herring, Carl Allen, Buster Williams, Victor Lewis, Buster Cooper, and Randy Brecker. In July of that year, he premiered his extended composition, Beauty and the Beast, written for saxophonist David Liebman and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, and toured in a quintet with Liebman. This was followed by his appearance as solo saxophonist in Sally Beamish's The Knotgrass Elegy, which was commissioned by the BBC Proms and performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Classical music endeavours included his largest known work for the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra's 40th anniversary. Written for saxophone, bass, drums, with a one hundred musician symphony orchestra, Edinburgh premiered on 12 April 2003 in the Usher Hall, Edinburgh. He then toured Latvia, Estonia, Russia, and Finland. He has toured in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, France, America, Turkey, Switzerland, Azerbaijan, Malta, Bratislava, Russia, Yemen and Romania, and the UK.

Smith formed the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra in 2002, financing rehearsals and travelling expenses for teenage players from across the country out of his own pocket. The orchestra has performed at jazz festivals throughout Scotland and released its first album, Exploration, in Toronto, Canada in 2008.

In 2005, Smith reunited with Joe Locke, recording the album Dear Life (Sirocco) and touring extensively with the vibist's group. In the same year, Smith formed a duo with another long-time colleague, bassist Andersen; with the addition of drummer Paolo Vinaccia, this has since developed into one of Europe's leading jazz trios, with a busy concert itinerary and a debut album, Live at Belleville (released on ECM Records in 2008), which received innumerable album of the year nominations in the press worldwide.

As well as three duo albums, Bezique, Symbosis, and Whispering of the Stars, Smith's partnership with Kellock resulted in Smith creating an expanded jazz arrangement of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue for the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, with Kellock as the featured soloist at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival on Friday 28 July 2006, a recording of which was released in May 2009. Another saxophone and piano pairing, with Swede Jacob Karlzon, has featured at jazz festivals in Edinburgh, Islay and Fife. In 2014 Smith revised his earlier version of Rhapsody in Blue for Japanese pianist Makoto Ozone.

Scottish National Jazz Orchestra

In 1995 Smith founded the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, which has presented programs of repertory classics and more contemporary works, often specially commissioned.

The repertory programss have included Duke Ellington's extended suites, celebrations of Count Basie and Benny Goodman (with special guest Ken Peplowski) and the collaborations between Miles Davis and Gil Evans – Porgy & Bess, Sketches of Spain (both with Gerard Presencer as trumpet soloist) and Miles Ahead (with Ingrid Jensen). SNJO has presented the music of Charles Mingus, Oliver Nelson, Benny Carter, Stan Kenton, Thelonious Monk, Steely Dan, Astor Piazzolla, and Pat Metheny (with guitarists Jim Mullen, Phil Robson, Mike Walker and Kevin MacKenzie) and premiered special commissions by Keith Tippett, Florian Ross, and Geoffrey Keezer, as well as specially commissioned arrangements of John Coltrane, Chick Corea (with drummer Gary Novak), Wayne Shorter featuring Gary Burton, Electric Miles featuring John Scofield, Weather Report featuring Peter Erskine, and Kurt Elling.

In addition, SNJO has performed music by contemporary jazz musicians. These include Kenny Wheeler's Sweet Sister Suite; Joe Lovano's Celebrating Sinatra with arrangements by Manny Albam; the music of Maria Schneider conducted by the composer; and Smith's Planet Wave, a large-scale composition made possible by the Arts Foundation/Barclays Bank jazz composition fellowship prize which marries Smith's music to text by poet Edwin Morgan. The concerts with Lovano also featured the premiere of Smith's Torah, a work based on the first five books of the Bible in which a titanic struggle occurs between good and evil. Written over seventy days, the fifty-minute composition was created for Lovano and SNJO. During the same evening that Torah was being premiered in Scotland, Cleo Laine and John Dankworth premiered The Morning of the Imminent by Smith and Morgan at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

Classical music

In 1989 Smith performed An Rathad ùr, a concerto for saxophone by William Sweeney, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for the television series Jazz Types, which Smith also presented. Prompted by Roger Pollen of the Scottish Ensemble, he spent six months studying orchestration for strings with a commission for saxophone and strings very much in mind. As a Blue Note musician at the time, Smith had access to the parent company EMI's classical catalogue. He researched orchestration texts by Samuel Adler, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Cecil Forsyth, and spent two productive years in Paris where he studied classical music. He wrote his first classical composition, Unirsi in Matrimonio, for saxophone and strings in 1990.^[5] This was followed by another work for strings and saxophone, Un Ecossais A Paris in 1991, and he collaborated with classical pianist Murray McLaughlin for Sonata No.1 - Hall of Mirrors and Sonata No.2 Dreaming with Open Eyes, both for saxophone and piano.

The next seven years were spent preparing for a much bigger orchestral work, the saxophone concerto Hiroshima (1998). This was premiered with the Orchestra of St. John Smith's Square at Chelmsford Cathedral and included strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, piano, and saxophone. Smith appeared as solo saxophonist for Sally Beamish's The Knotgrass Elegy, commissioned for the 2001 BBC Proms, and performed with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall in London.^[6] In 2002, Smith performed his earlier and much lengthier re-invention of Children's Songs for saxophone and orchestra with the Scottish Ensemble at St John's Kirk, Perth.^[7] Other classical music endeavours have included a massive undertaking for the Edinburgh Youth Orchestra's 40th anniversary in 2003. A suite, entitled Edinburgh, was written for the occasion with saxophone, bass, drums, and a one hundred person symphony orchestra. The work toured Scotland, Estonia, Russia, and Finland.

Smith was a featured soloist with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for the 2012 BBC Proms Last Night Celebrations in Scotland at Glasgow's City Halls. His contribution with pianist Joanna MacGregor and soprano Carolyn Sampson, under the baton of conductor Stephen Bell, took place on the final night.

The journey towards the making of Modern Jacobite began in January 2015 with a suggestion from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra for a collaboration. Following discussions, Smith embarked on a period of composition and orchestrating until the recording dates in May 2015.

Education

After returning to Scotland in 1991 Smith dedicated himself to increasing the popularity of jazz. He formed the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra in 1995. He formed the Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra in 2002, financing rehearsals and travelling expenses for teenage players from across the country out of his own pocket. The orchestra performed at jazz festivals throughout Scotland and released its first album, Exploration, in Toronto, Canada, in 2008. In 2009 Scotland's first full-time jazz course began at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, which he leads.^[8] The event was broadcast live by BBC News. He designed the jazz course and taught Saxophone, Music Business, Chord Scale Harmony, Jazz Repertoire, Studio Recording, Performance of Jazz History, and Notation by Hand.

Smith's work in jazz education began while working for Gary Burton in 1986 when the group presented master classes to international students; this work continued with Smith's groups until 1990, when he started teaching at Broughton High School in Edinburgh with John Rae, Brian Kellock ,and Kenny Ellis. In 1993 he began teaching improvisation at Napier University. In 1995 he created the curriculum for the National Jazz Institute in Glasgow, which he directed until 1998. Smith has given master classes in Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

Discography

Awards and honors

References

External links

• Official site
• SNJO
• Tommy Smith Youth Jazz Orchestra "TSYJO"