Deus ex machina
Timing is all. Featuring the pianist John Taylor with to our minds the greatest Scottish jazz musician Tommy Smith who this month is touring with Kurt Elling and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra one of the most significance denoting European big bands pretty much since its inception, these unreleased tracks date to 2003 and were recorded in New York. Sound quality wise they are far better than most Jazz in Britain label outpourings although we really liked JT on Fragment, a superb archival release of originals from the 1970s featuring Kenny Wheeler in the sextet put out by JinB two years ago.
Strong sound quality
Love Unrequited was recorded in New York studio Avatar, a place that I visited on a rare foray in May 2003 to attend a Rocksteady recording session and interview Monty Alexander.
The provenance of Love Unrequited is that it was recorded the previous month around the time Evolution was made.
We reckoned that the recent also Bandcamp only Luminescence happens to be up there with some of Smith's greatest work that we reckon before this are the albums Paris, The Sound of Love, Azure, Karma and Mira. The intimacy here certainly eclipses the busier feel of Evolution.
The 1935 version of 'In a Sentimental Mood'
One incredible moment is after a voice says ''rollin''' when there's a lonesome version of the Newley-Bricusse Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory 1970s slice of timelessness 'Pure Imagination' that has Smith soliloquising imaginatively before the much loved melody comes in.
The other tunes are: George Gershwin's 'I Loves You Porgy', that hitherto un-named bonus track from Luminescence Billy Strayhorn's 'A Flower is a Lovesome Thing'; Ellington's 'In a Sentimental Mood' that stops us in our tracks to immediately listen to the ''ur text'' and a 1935 rendition found on YouTube when the song was new and preceded by some 40 years the birth of the ubiquitous video and audio streaming site's inventors Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim.
Progress in chronological terms with art is meaningless
Smith and Taylor's treatments are future facing, it’s no contradiction to assert - notwithstanding the historic material - as is everything here.
And that's the alchemy turning such haunts of ancient peace into the now even if we have to wait some 20 years to hear such a takeover of note.
There's nothing about much now in 2024 that can match what's here in the same idiom to be frank. It's insane to think of progress in any sense as much as it is to quibble about competing with the past.
A free improvisation lies at the heart of what makes this vital
The rest of this new release has The Special Magic of (a release that itself had a lot of Ellingtonia on it) Jimmy Rowles classic 'The Peacocks' from the 1970s that Taylor's former wife Norma Winstone famously set words to becoming 'A Timeless Place' in the 90s. But the key version to know in this piano/sax context is Rowles with Stan Getz. But Smith isn't a Getzian. His sound is much more Coltranian.
'Love Unrequited' the title track completes the tunes. It's a free improvisation which is completely in keeping with the mood and is pure composition just as much given the absolute rapport, skill and immersion in the freedom of jazz and expression here.
An influence on subsequent pianists
Manchester born Taylor (1942-2015) is an influence today on such incredible players as Pablo Held, John Turville and Richard Fairhurst, who deserves a lot of plaudits for Inside Out this year. Taylor, famed most of all for his tenure in Azimuth, was on Smith's sextet album Evolution recorded at the aforementioned Avatar and released by the Edinburgh born Smith on his own label Spartacus in 2003.
Sadly just this weekend we learnt of the death of drummer Martin France at the age of 60, after battling the onerous ramifications of prostate cancer for some years, who performed with Taylor and Belonging Band great double bassist Palle Danielsson (who also passed away this year) on their peerless 2008 recording Whirlpool that also has 'I Loves You Porgy' - to draw a link in the repertoire to Love Unrequited - on it.
Smith on Evolution led his fellow Brit Taylor with an all-star assemblage of US jazz players - icons even then, 20 years ago - John Scofield, John Patitucci, Joe Lovano and Bill Stewart.
Smith, now 57, has been playing saxophone since he was 12, studied at Berklee in Boston, founded the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra in 1995 and in 2009 became head of jazz and later a Professor at Glasgow's Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2009.
Again this release is only on Bandcamp so far. Smith says, completely appositely - especially if you deconstruct the poetic language of what he says in his choice of verb into a more figurative non-literal sense of ''invading'' rather than ''depurifying'' - "one note from John could debase your soul."
John Taylor, at Avatar in 2003, photo: Paul Thorburn. Tommy Smith photo: Derek Clark
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