Lifeline! by The Fraser Smith Quartet

Lifeline! by The Fraser Smith Quartet

LIFELINE TRACKLIST & AUDIO

Rooted in a golden age of tenor saxophonists, while alert to the possibilities of today, Fraser Smith is one of the most vibrant musicians in British jazz. On Lifeline! Smith fuses his musical passions so to create an album that is bold in execution and very fresh.
GARTH CARTWRIGHT

Fraser Smith Tenor
Rob Barron – Piano
Steve Brown – Drums
Simon Read – Bass

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PRESS

a tenor it isn’t tough to like..
THE TIMES UK

On stage, the musicianship is off the scale..
THE GUARDIAN UK

One senses that there’s more yet to come from Smith
JAZZWISE UK

Smith – in his most beautiful style – is evocative of the finest music that came from the bronzed horn of Dexter Gordon, Illinois Jacquet and the masters of the tenor saxophonists of the era
JAZZ DA GAMA

A tour de force of saxophone ballad playing done without a safety net
BEBOP SPOKEN HERE UK

Nonchalantly confident and very hard swinging
LONDON JAZZ NEWS

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REVIEWS LIFELINE!

ALBUM REVIEW LIFELINE! BEBOP SPOKEN HERE. UK 28/07/2025
Originally from Birmingham and now London based, Smith personifies what we once referred to as a ‘tough tenor’. The term was particularly applied to those gutsy hard-blowing saxists who had one foot in the swing era and the other in bebop and its subsequent variants.
Players such as Illinois Jacquet, Dexter Gordon, Ike Quebec, Arnett Cobb, Sonny Stitt, Wardell Gray and maybe early Coltrane to mention but some. By his own admission, Smith acknowledges Jacquet as having been his biggest influence dedicating one of his compositions, Jacquet Jump, to the former Hampton and JATP legend. Red Prysock, Fathead Newman and Jimmy Forrest are also respectfully name checked in Red Haze, Fathead and Like Forrest.
Of course even the toughest of tenors have soft centres as Smith proves in two exquisite ballad performances – the only two non-originals – The Man I Love and My One and Only Love – the latter piece played totally unaccompanied. A tour de force of saxophone ballad playing done without a safety net.
It’s always good to hear tenor playing of this style and standard particularly when such kindred spirits as Barron, Read and Brown are in the mix. Close your eyes and you’re listening to Dexter’s latest album on Blue Note complete with quotes and Sonny Clark, Butch Warren and Al Harewood in the engine room.
Although I have mentioned Smith’s inspirational roots there’s nothing cloned about the music. The tenor player is very much his own man whilst at the same time advancing the tradition. LANCE


ALBUM REVIEW LIFELINE! THE TIMES. UK 28/07/2025 ****
Even if you haven’t listened to the Londoner Fraser Smith, you can tell he’s a “tough tenor” connoisseur from his original song titles which include Jaquet Jump, Like Forrest and Fathead. He certainly has the forthright approach of those greats but there is subtlety there too.
Check out his luscious Latin romanticising on The Man I Love, jazz waltz elegance on Soho Stroll and funky vibrato on The Shaker. A tenor it isn’t tough to like! CHRIS PEARSON

ALBUM REVIEW LIFELINE! JAZZWISE. UK 28/07/2025 ****
This is Birmingham-born Smith’s third album since he landed in London in 2010: we last noticed his quarte’s music two years ago in Jazzwise 285 and liked his gutsy tenor style, noting the influence of Dexter Gordon and Stanley Turrentine.
This time round his tone seems to have deepened, the sound is grainier, fatter too, the phrases more direct, sometimes curt in their cut-offs, much in the style of another Smith favourite, the great Illinois Jacquet. This can lead at times to an R&B feel, this another area in which Jacquet scored, its direct swinging quality all of a piece, Smith validating the connection with ‘Jacquet Jump’.
He bites into its jerky riff pattern with gusto, verging on the raunchy, after Read’s opening solo.
Then again, Smith can take his time as on a lovely ballad version of ‘The Man I Love’ and a quite masterly reading of ‘My One and Only Love’, taken unaccompanied, the tone softer, the mood heartfelt.
Ten of the album’s 12 tracks are Smith originals: all have shape and prompt well-wrought tenor explorations. His helpmates respond admirably throughout: Read with strong, centred basslines and the steadfast Brown crisp and to the point, but above all, it’s the superior piano of Rob Barron that stands out, his playing brim-full of ideas, each solo a mini-master class in boppish expression, sometime effusive, always fluent and often arresting.
One senses that there’s more yet to come from Smith: perhaps a second horn next time, in true Blue Note fashion?
PETER VACHET


ALBUM REVIEW LIFELINE! JAZZDAGAMA. UK 28/10/2025
One not, even a raspy phrase in and we’ve arrived in the dusky world of the tenor saxophone – the works of older growling world in which tenor saxophonists swung and soared from one end of the music world to the other. It was – and continues to be – a world where the big bruising tenor saxophonists battled with their horns and adorned music with the colours of the night aglow with flames.

On his second album Lifeline hauling his robust quartet along with Fraser Smith puts his spectacular imprint on the music of both the tenor, as well as the music of our time. In the swinging scheme of things, It’s fair to say that Mr Smith Is the boy wonder of neo-mainstream. However, he is tied to no one or no ‘one’ thing that defines his brand of music. His growl, though, is deep and enduring. His bellow is full of the warm air that his lungs can hold. To that extent Mr Smith is a law unto himself: a dark knight with a keen eye for both the fine tuning of melodicism and – equally – the sharpest ear for harmonic and rhythmic intensity.

Mr Smith – in his most beautiful style – is evocative of the finest music that came from the bronzed horn of Dexter Gordon, Illinois Jacquet and the masters of the tenor saxophonists of the era set aflame by their horns. In that world Mr Smith stands apart – poles apart really – bestriding the old and the new like that proverbial Colossus of Rhodes.

Lifeline features beautifully crafted arrangements of beguiling variety and sensuousness in every lovingly caressed phrase. Mr Smith’s chosen material with one or two notable exceptions, judiciously focuses on some lesser known gem associated with Mr Gordon, Mr Jacquet and others of that era, Listening to the manner in which Mr Smith roars through the emotional changes, bending he notes in Red Haze, or sculpting the long-limbed and sustained inventions of The Man I Love and My One and Only Heart, standards in which it’s clear that there’s not a semiquaver that hasn’t been fastidiously considered.

There’s an unhurried quality to his approach, a lived-in character to his phrase-making that has elements of being engaging, threatening and combine the brimstone of youth with the well-honed values of experience. All of this is played with languid ease, each melodic variation following the other, inexorably, his sumptuous tenor sound brilliantly caught in this recording by a team that includes the engineering ingenuity of Ben Lamdin and Lewis Durham.

The musical prowess – sharp ears and brilliantly articulated voices – includes pianist Rob Barron, drummer Steve Brown and bassist Simon Read add much to the music, an intensity to the music that sets it apart and makes this album one to absolutely die for…
RAUL DA GAMA