Results for "Ray Smith"

Ray Smith

FOUR + Six

By Mark Watkins

Label: Jazz Hang Records
Released: 2024
Track listing: On Any Given Day in Summer; Don't Care Who Knows It; Against My Desire to Imagine; The Executioner is Looking Away; Shouldn'a Did That; Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow and Forever; Without Another Word.

Mark Watkins: FOUR + Six

by Chris May
April 5, 2024

We had out of nowhere, we had straight outta Compton. Here comes straight out of Brigham Young University, Idaho, where saxophone quartet FOUR leader Mark Watkins has been director of jazz studies since 1999. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints may not the most abundant source of high-grade jazz--one assumes that Watkins is a ...

FOUR

Continuing a long tradition of wonderful jazz saxophone quartet recordings FOUR adds trumpet, trombone, piano, guitar, bass and drums for a smorgasbord of new tunes by the amazing composer, Mark Watkins. 

FOUR is Mark Watkins, soprano saxophone; Ray Smith, alto saxophone; Sandon Mayhew, tenor saxophone; and Jon Gudmundson, baritone saxophone. 

They are joined by Derrick Gardner, trumpet (Count Basie Band); Vincent Gardner, trombone (lead trombone with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra); Justin Nielsen, piano; Corey Christiansen, guitar; Braun Kahn, bass; and Kobie Watkins, drums (Sonny Rollins). (See Gordon Goodwin’s review in the FOUR bio and Mark’s own notes.) 

Q'd Up: Going Places

by Jack Bowers
September 14, 2021

Q'd Up is a quintet comprising faculty members at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. The group's latest album, Going Places, marks the end of an era, as two of its longest-serving members—multi-instrumentalist Ray Smith and pianist Steve Lindeman--are indeed “going places." In other words, they are retiring and making their final recorded appearance with the ...