Tom Smith big band | 'A Year in the Life' and Ronnie's show

**The Tom Smith Big Band play Ronnie Scott’s on 6 January**

Most complete work yet from a player who emerged with Gecko on the Basho label

Key points

Title track streams

A highlight today found in the marlbank 10 playlist on Spotify is the imaginatively arranged Tom Smith track ‘A Year in the Life’.

It’s the title track of the saxophonist-arranger-composer’s upcoming big band Fey Moose label release, a collection of tunes largely made up of original compositions of the altoist’s.

Strong year for Smith

Smith was great this year on crooner James Hudson’s retro Moonray.

But here the style pivots and by contrast is far more Graham Collier-like.

In other words it’s a progressively inclined big band sound that moves into relatively uncharted quasi-prog and centred free bop territory.

How it does this is by drawing on jazz-rock and much else indicating a tradition in transition that Collier, an influence on Loose Tubes, did so much to inculcate as a pioneer of British jazz in the 1970s.

1974’s Darius – a small group trumpet and trombone speckled affair featuring Harry Beckett and Derek Wadsworth in the horn section.

We break off to listen to Collier’s Darius in particular. You can’t compare like for like of course but somehow the Collier approach resonates.

A Year in the Life artwork — *A Year in the Life* artwork. With Smith on the album are – full line-up: altoists Graeme Blevins and Sam Glaser; tenorists Alex Garnett and Paul Booth; baritone saxist/bass clarinettist Jessamy Holder; trumpeter/flugel players Tom Walsh, George Hogg, Freddie Gavita, James Davison and Alistair Martin; trombonists Trevor Mires, Olli Martin and Dan Higham; bass trombonist Yusuf Narçin; pianist Will Barry; Hammond Organist Liam Dunachie; guitarist Jamie McCredie; bassist Conor Chaplin on both double bass and bass guitar and drummer Luke Tomlinson.

‘Speedboat in Trouble’ on YouTube in a live version is one of the tracks found on A Year in the Life that in addition to the title track also includes ‘Saviour Suzanne,’ ‘Breathe,’ ‘We’re Being Watched,’ ‘Atlas’ and ‘Aplomb.’

Part of an ongoing UK big band renaissance

Big band members include Graeme Blevins, Jamie McCredie, Paul Booth, Freddie Gavita, Trevor Mires, Alex Garnett and Dan Higham. Look for the album itself on 21 February.

Smith, an alumnus of the Royal Academy of Music, who also plays bass clarinet emerged on Christine Allen and Max Steuer’s Basho label with Gecko in the dread Covid year of 2020. But before that he made the finals of the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year competition on two occasions and won the Peter Whittingham Development Award and was the lead alto in NYJO (The National Youth Jazz Orchestra).

Performing ‘Somewhere’ by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim with the great jazz singer Ian Shaw and fine pianist Jamie Safir known for his work on What’s New? with Shaw and Iain Ballamy.

Smith is also known for his work leading the Queertet who have collaborated with Ian Shaw and Jamie Safir.

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