Makoto Ozone wasn't to know it but as he played a solo recital that showcased the piano's full capabilities as much as his own, an even bigger surprise waited in the audience than even he had imagined.
It was a typical Tommy Smith move. The saxophonist had warned his former college friend and Gary Burton Band sidekick of a guest appearance during their duo spot but Ozone wasn’t expecting – only those who’d spotted a familiar figure discretely heading “backstage” were – Branford Marsalis to materialise.
The oldest Marsalis sibling’s arrival elicited a response from Ozone which “small child at Christmas” doesn’t begin to describe and the resulting trio was as much a treat for the audience as it was for the Japanese pianist, with Marsalis’s tenor saxophone playing adding to the mood of geniality that Ozone and Smith created.
Ozone has a marvellous touch and his accompaniments and improvisations show a sense of jazz history that must have made his featured soloist role the previous evening in Lichfield with the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra on Smith’s adaptation of Rhapsody in Blue quite a spectacle. His playing with Smith on Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Lady was somehow understated but rich.
Smith is sometimes accused of lacking soul. Well, his playing here answered that eloquently, his beautifully sensitive tenor and soprano saxophone and shakuhachi flute phrasing using the cathedral’s acoustic delay to full effect, his extemporisation on a Thelonious Monk theme matching Marsalis for gracefulness and wit, and his reading of Ozone’s Where Do We Go From Here articulating the composer’s feelings towards Japan’s recent earthquake victims with moving respect.
HHHH
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