Tommy Smith - Embodying the Light

The Guardian 80

(Spartacus)

Scottish saxophonist, bandleader, educator and label proprietor Tommy Smith has been one of contemporary jazz’s expressively independent voices since his teenage-prodigy arrival in the 1980s. John Coltrane was, almost inevitably, an early influence (Jan Garbarek a later one), but the reflective Smith has waited until his 50th birthday to release his own tribute. This beautifully played homage in the style of the master’s 1960s quartet (rising young Glaswegian pianist Pete Johnstone is a big contributor, alongside bassist Calum Gourlay and drummer Sebastiaan de Krom) and the leader’s variety of tone and dynamics in these accounts of such classics as Dear Lord, Resolution and Naima testifies to the authority of his technique and the receptiveness of his ear. Smith’s fast-moving slaloms across the tenor’s register are bewitching on Transformation, his sound glides between querulous fragility and assertion on Naima; Johnstone dramatically invokes McCoy Tyner on a pulsating Resolution; and Smith’s three originals are right in Coltrane’s ballpark. The session is almost overly faithful to its subject’s methods, but Smith’s eloquence on a saxophone is all his own.