An “Anniversary” Release from Smoke Sessions

I recently learned that this is the 25th anniversary of the Smoke Jazz Club, which seems to be significant enough to have its own Wikipedia page. It also has its own record label, Smoke Sessions Records, which was launched ten years ago in 2014. One of the club’s traditions was the celebration of an annual John Coltrane Festival at the end of every calendar year, running from the end of December to the beginning of January.

It was through that Festival that I first became aware of the record label. At the end of December in 2021, I wrote about Mabern Plays Coltrane. This album accounted for the final three nights of the festival on January 5, 6, and 7 of 2018. Pianist Harold Mabern (an octogenarian by that time) led a sextet with a front line consisting of Vincent Herring on alto saxophone, Eric Alexander on tenor saxophone, and Steve Davis on trombone. The other rhythm players were John Webber on bass and Joe Farnsworth on drums. Six of the seven tracks were Coltrane compositions, the other being the Coltrane “standard,” “My Favorite Things.”

Steve Turre on the cover of his Sanyas album (courtesy of DL Media)

Over the last couple of years, my encounters with Smoke Session have been a “sometime thing.” This is due, at least in part, to my effort to maintain a reasonable balance between the classical and jazz genres, with a preference for more cerebral approaches in the latter category. As a result, I returned to this label at the end of last month, when I learned about the release of Sanyas. On this album trombonist Steve Turre led a sextet. He was joined on the front line by trumpeter Nicholas Payton and Ron Blake on tenor saxophone. Rhythm was provided by pianist Isaiah J. Thompson, Buster Williams on bass, and drummer Lenny White.

The album is relatively brief by current standards, running just short of 50 minutes. Turre contributes only two originals, the title track (which is the first track on the album) and “Wishful Thinking.” Two of the tracks are standards from the early twentieth century: Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You Are” and Jack Strachey’s “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You).” The remaining track is Lee Morgan’s “Mr. Kenyatta,” which he recorded on February 15, 1964 for his Search for the New Land Blue Note album, a major contribution to my own “jazz learning curve.”

Like Mabern Plays Coltrane, Sanyas was recorded over a three-day weekend at the Club at the beginning of August of 2023. Turre is the sort of leader that allows his colleagues to have their say, often coming up with a “response” to the “call” of one of those player’s solo takes. As a result, there is more than enough to draw the attentive listener into all five of the tracks on the album, whatever the overall brevity may be. Nevertheless, I have to confess that, as a result of listening to this album, I now find myself with an urge to go back to my Morgan collection!