"Reveals Smith to be a master of mood and lyricism. Exquisite on all counts." BBC Music Magazine

Tommy Smith - tenor & soprano saxophone
Guy Barker - trumpet
Julian Arguelles - alto & soprano saxophone
Steve Hamilton - piano
Terje Gewelt - bass
Ian Froman - drums

Engineered by Calum Malcolm.
Recorded at Castle Sound Studios, Pencaitland on 19, 20 December, 1994.
All compositions written by Tommy Smith and based on poems by Norman MacCaig.
All works commissioned by Ibis Productions with assistance from The Scottish Arts Council.

This is Tommy's second album for Linn, following last year's trio set?Reminiscence. It is also his second commission for Sextet, and represents a massive leap forward from the already impressive achievement captured on Paris (Blue Note, 1992.)

The music on this album represents a new peak in the progress of saxophonist and composer Tommy Smith. It seems a long time now since he was a teenage prodigy setting out from Edinburgh for Berklee college in Boston back in 1983, but he has matured both as a person and as a musician, and is now set to fulfill all the promise we heard in him as a fifteen year old those dozen or so years ago.

It has not all been easy, nor has progress always been smooth, but the knocks and setbacks have surely contributed their own valuable lessons to his development. If things maybe came at him a little too fast in those first few years, he has learned a great deal in the process, and that is reflected in the superbly creative and utterly assured music on this recording.

The Forward Motion trio which cut Reminiscenceare here again, with bass player Terje Gewelt and drummer Ian Froman providing the rhythmic and harmonic foundation alongside pianist Steve Hamilton, another young Scot who has followed Smith’s pioneering road to Berklee [which is, of course, where Tommy met Terje and Ian in the first place.

The band is completed by trumpeter Guy Barker and saxophonist Julian Arguelles.