This is a review of a gig given by Tommy Smith (tenor) and Brian Kellock (piano)
More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
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6 June
This is a (delayed) review of a gig given at The Stables, Wavendon, by Tommy Smith and Brian Kellock on Tuesday 2 June at 8.00 p.m.
The jazz world / market remains a dazzlingly small one, and no disrespect to Stacey Kent’s enchantingly quirky vocal-style, but there is no way that the ticket-price of her gig at The Stables (on 1 July) – at Wavendon, on the outskirts of Milton Keynes (@stablesMK) – should be £9.00 more than that for someone of the class of Scottish saxophonist Tommy Smith ! Let alone excellently partnered – as they have played together for some years – by pianist Brian Kellock. (More, if one considers that an announcement offering two tickets for the price of one had been made.)
Staff of The Stables, talking about the gig beforehand and the fact that it was two sets of fifty minutes, seemed puzzled that it was piano and sax, not a trio – they had clearly not figured that a jazz trio is, typically, piano with bass and drums, whereas it is larger groupings, from a quartet upwards, where one has a voice (human or instrumental, since clarinets, saxes, trumpets, trombones, flutes, etc., have much in common with our voices), or a pair of such voices.
The gig tended to alternate slower / quieter numbers with livelier / faster ones, and the first transition needed to bed down, after a number by Michel Legrand (he had a piece in each set, as did hits for Glenn Miller). For there is something banal about ‘I want to be happy’* (from Tea for Two), and, after quite a right-ahead statement of it, the duo took a time to work their magic, before getting it away into jazzified territory : they did it, because they can do anything, but the shock of the new did not subside straightaway.
After that, and with Hoagy Carmichael given an elaborate piano introduction of that dizzying kind, where one can both not catch the tune or even confidently state any more what ‘Stardust’ should sound like, they treated the repertoire as raw material for their ever-inventive treatments.
At times, they came very close to home, sweetly rendering the melody, but, with the same reverence, embellishing, enlivening and abandoning all but its shape. Both men have a strong rhythmic quality to their playing**, not just, with Brian Kellock, elements of boogie-woogie, blues or stride, but in their phrasing, and in fitting so well together, though both are – from the harmonics and note-pattern of their chosen standards – creating before us, with and through their practised feel for chordal variation / progression, and changing accentuation.
If the staff at The Stables had been worried about any lack of difference, from piece to piece, in the sound of a duo, they need not have been – standard orchestral playing can easily be less varied than that of a small ensemble, if one is attuned to the dynamics, pace and resources of chamber musicians :
In December 2014, hearing Jan Garbarek, majestic again with The Hilliard Ensemble*** , one reflected on his distinctive sound-quality, sharp in a sort of way that maybe (as we know it to be so ?) suggests Scandinavian – and what it is that gives those players who have their own voice a tone that is all theirs, even if, of course, it will be cast in a variety of hues. Sound-production is always going to be subject to a number of factors, but, with Garbarek, it is only partly his attack, and more, at the heart of it, how he breathes with the instrument, and infuses his phrasing with the felt physicality of the breath.
Calling Tommy Smith’s tone ‘straight’ might sound as if it implies that he is square, but consider the word in phrases such as He looked at me straight or In a straight-ahead linking passage, and think again. Nothing simple / simplistic in what he does, but a clear and candid way of delivery that gets right to the point, and, bringing to his approach, a wealth of skill and experience that lets him place juxtapositions of register, breath-quality, intensity and feeling with strong, intuitive assurance.
Something that Tommy Smith did in one piece, very atmospherically, was directing the sound of his tenor into the body of the piano. At first just so that his playing came off the lid onto the strings, but, later, pointing the outlet from the horn onto the strings, and even with the bell of his instrument inside the frame.
During the interval and quick to get to the foyer, one found Tommy Smith, all ready to sign CDs for just £10 (and Brian Kellock soon joined him). He was asked about his breathing, because his breath-control and the way that, sometimes almost speaking, he breathes through his sax had been a joy to witness. As he was going to say in the second set about the ensembles that he had been playing with (from a quartet to new compositions with a symphony orchestra, where he needed to use a harder reed), as well as that talk of directing his sound into the piano, he answered that it depends what one is playing and with whom. But he was very alive to the idea of someone watching him as he played, breathing through these longer phrases, and having wondered how he did that.
When we resumed, we were told that some had come up, made themselves known, and bought CDs and got them signed, so we were also given an explanation of the title of the new one, Whispering of the Stars – not a piece of vanity that the pair are stars, but how, in the North of Norway (where Tommy Smith apparently spends some time), the effect of exhaling into the cold air is described.
We were also told us a little more about blowing into an open piano :
* As a twelve-year-old at a school in Edinburgh that did not have many resources, there had been the stringed frame (no more) of a piano on the wall, and Tommy Smith had liked playing notes at it (which, he swiftly revealed, had been the opening ones of the only tune that he knew, the ‘Pink Panther’ theme)
* In a concert with The Stables’ own Sir John Dankworth to celebrate 150 years of the sax (so in 1991 ?), he had a piece for eight saxes, JD and his Eight Dwarves, but also a solo piece, likewise played with a pianist (but in the dark), and also into the body of the piano – which was reported in the press as having used a synthesizer...
* Brian Kellock, he observed, had been using moments of opportunity to determine his use of the sustaining pedal
Come a second Gershwin song, ‘They can’t take that away from me’, it seemed (he was not quite clear) that Brian Kellock might have heard Tommy Smith sing at some point, when the latter admitted that he did not know the words anyway. (Behind, and unheard on stage, a woman said The way you wear your hat.) In the light of this observation, it was curious that Tommy Smith chose to tell us that he was puzzled by what the title might mean, for, in fact, the lyrics are plain enough : the song must have a context, where, even if one separates a couple, the memory of qualities that one observed in, or of experiences with, the other cannot be negated (I’ll miss your fond caress).
What, if permitted, would have made a great photograph was Tommy Smith, standing the base of the bell of his sax on the floor, and leaning on the neck, during an extended piano solo. After the gig, one joked with them about the longest that he had had to wait, and Brian Kellock quipped As long as possible !
In the first set, one could see Tommy Smith, with respect tinged with amusement, look down the length of the instrument, under the lid, for an indication from his colleague – it did come, but it was a long time coming, both times, as the other really got absorbed by his solo, and away into a distant fairway, from which he yet came back.
They finished with nothing as late as a tune from 1927 (Tommy Smith had managed to suggest, earlier, that one’s relation to a date subsequent to one’s birth made a song from that year not earlier, but a later one), but from around five hundred years ago, whose title, in Gaelic, he did not try to pronounce. The meditative tone of the piece and its playing brought the gig to a different type of close, where each, as we applauded, could celebrate the other’s artistry and the whole evening.
On leaving The Stables, they were getting into their hire-car (Tommy Smith behind the wheel), so they were saluted – next stop was Brighton, and one wished them well for that.
End-notes
* Which Tommy Smith was getting at, in the second set, when talking about musicals and ‘The Surrey with the Fringe on Top’ (from Oklahoma (Rodgers and Hammerstein)) : revealingly, given that he has even less reason to be called what he is than Chick Corea** (Tommy Smith is not his real name), he told us that he had had to watch his uncle in Les Misérables, as Jean Valjean, fifteen times, because he had been in the show as many times (although he begged to see the backstage effects on the last occasion...).
We also learnt that he had been forced, in childhood, to side with his father against a maternal predisposition towards The Stylistics, and (to which Tommy Smith ascribed a painful side) The Twist, in favour of Glenn Miller and other jazz influences, so we had a lively take on a well-known Miller number :
** Especially so in a Rumba by Chick Corea called Armando, which, as was rightly suggested, is his Christian name ('Chick' is a nickname that has stuck, not uniquely in jazz).
*** In their final collaboration, and also in the concert after which the singers were to cease being a vocal quartet : until one first saw them, it was barely credible that just four men could produce such a rich and consistent texture.
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
