For years Kansas Smitty’s has been one of the leading places of the unbridled creation of the London jazz scene and if the club has closed its doors, the formation of the same name continues to celebrate with modernity the immense heritage of the blues and jazz of the last century. Founded by saxophonist and clarinetist of Italian-American origin Giacomo Smith, the group with variable geometry has emancipated itself over the course of its albums from its swing aesthetic, preferring the atmosphere to the structures to offer complex and elegant compositions at the service of emotions. A spiritual as well as musical shift initiated in 2020 on Things Happened Here and which is accentuated today with the album We’re Not in Kansas Anymore.
« I want the listener to feel a wide variety of emotions, I want them to visualize things. There is joy and humor, but there is also spirituality. There’s seriousness, there’s loss and longing, and it’s all voluntary says the composer who recently produced the latest album by Jamies Cullum or rising star drummer Jas Kayser.
Giacomo Smith sculpts here a cinematographic universe more creative than ever, plunging his blues and his swing of yesteryear into a jazz impregnated with Tourareg, Malian or Ethiopian music, broken-beat pulsation and warm groove. On this work of timeless beauty, trumpeters Dylan Jones (Ezra Collective) and Laura Jurd (Dinosaur) join the saxophonist’s accomplices; Dave Archer on guitar, Ferg Ireland on double bass, Will Cleasby on drums, Joe Webb on piano and Alec Harper on tenor saxophone.
Kansas Smitty’s is in concert on February 23 and 24 at the Duc des Lombards in Paris.