Fraser Smith Quartet - Tip Top! [CD]

Format: CD
Catalogue No.: UBU0119CD
Barcode: 5060451220322
Release Date: 07 Apr 2023
Genre: Contemporary Jazz 

Tip Top! is the current stop-off-point in the musical journey/career of sax player Fraser Smith. Two decades of study and scholarship have informed this album of original material. Wholly inspired by the music and artists of the late bebop to early hard bop periods, Fraser pays tribute to his heroes with ten tracks stylistically dedicated to the jazz masters of the mid-twentieth century. A slightly late starter, Fraser picked up the sax at age 15, and at around the same discovered a Charlie Parker CD in the Woolworths discount bin. These incidents started him on a lifetime path of decoding and understanding bebop and its descendent genres. With no musicians in his immediate family, he was left to his own devices, listening and playing along to the CDs of Louis Armstrong and Scott Hamilton. Three years later Fraser was accepted onto the jazz course at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama where he later graduated with first class honours. After that he moved to the capital to complete his Masters Degree at the prestigious Trinity College of Music, London. The line-up consists of Smith on tenor sax, Rob Barron (piano), Simon Read (bass) and Steve Brown (drums).

Tracklisting
1. Might Not
2. Iroquois
3. Tip Top!
4. Whaddya Know?
5. Prisoner of Love
6. Pip
7. Wardell
8. Out Into the Daylight
9. Bluey
10. Snow Off Broadway