Tommy Smith & Brian Kellock at Broomfield Village Hall

Tommy Smith and Brian Kellock are two of Scotland’s greatest jazz musicians. Their work separately – saxophonist Smith as teenage saxophonist with Gary Burton through a career that includes recording for Blue Note, leading his own bands and touring the world with Arild Andersen’s state of the art jazz trio; Kellock as the master musician’s chosen accompanist and award-winning piano trio leader – constitutes many volumes of high class jazz experience. And together they have recorded three acclaimed duo albums as well as creating the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s ecstatically received Rhapsody in Blue Live and In the Spirit of Duke albums....

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Tommy Smith and Brian Kellock are two of Scotland’s greatest jazz musicians. Their work separately – saxophonist Smith as teenage saxophonist with Gary Burton through a career that includes recording for Blue Note, leading his own bands and touring the world with Arild Andersen’s state of the art jazz trio; Kellock as the master musician’s chosen accompanist and award-winning piano trio leader – constitutes many volumes of high class jazz experience. And together they have recorded three acclaimed duo albums as well as creating the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s ecstatically received Rhapsody in Blue Live and In the Spirit of Duke albums.

In concert, as their recent appearance at Rochester Jazz Festival in New York confirmed, they are the consummate jazz article: virtuoso musicians who make sublime music spontaneously for the audience, playing with passion, tenderness, soulfulness and humour and at all times practising the art of communication. As much a double act in their between-song banter as they are in musical conversation, they are seriously good players who play serious music and yet they entertain and share the obvious fun they derive from their partnership as musicians and friends.

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