Re-Releases

Alan Skidmore’s Tribute To ‘Trane was first released on CD in 1991 and since then demand for this outstanding record has continued.  In 2005 Miles Music re-released a digitally re-mastered version and we are pleased to announce that it can be purchased online at a special price of £9.50 including postage to the UK.

From John Fordham’s original sleeve notes:

"Though John Coltrane died in 1967, his mature work is certainly as influential today as it was when the typhoon of it first hit the jazz world, and maybe more so. As with Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker, Coltrane’s way of playing has influenced not only saxophonists, but performers on many other instruments inside jazz and outside it."

"At 46 the British saxophonist Alan Skidmore, a devoted admirer of Coltrane for the past quarter-century, is now in his imposing prime, and this album is a long-postponed expression of gratitude to the American for the gift of his music. In this endeavour, Skidmore is powerfully accompanied by a trio that mixes the current generations of British Jazz. Pianist Jason Rebello, only 19 when this album was made, is an astonishing discovery. He swings effortlessly, his phrasing twists expectations, and he has enough of the ardent, emphatic style of McCoy Tyner under his fingers to provide the perfect support for an album devoted to Coltrane’s creations. Bassist Dave Green, a mainstay of the British jazz scene since the early ‘60s, is one of the most infectious ‘walkers’ in the business but can also be a reverberating chordal player, as he reveals on ‘Lonnie’s Lament’. And drummer Stephen Keogh, a Dublin musician who has been working with Skidmore over the past year, impressively maintains that stormy, rhythmically ambiguous percussion backdrop that is so much a part of the drama of Coltrane’s music."

"Skidmore establishes his empathy with `Trane’s yearning, striving sound on the relentless ‘Resolution’, but pays sensitive tribute to his gentle side on ‘Lonnie’s Lament’, a beautiful ballad which the British saxophonist invests with a mixture of tenderness and fire, his tone elegiac on the sustained notes, the quicksilver runs almost casually sown between them, Jason Rebello’s piano solo perfectly attuned to the mood. And Skidmore’s restatement of the theme at the close with Stephen Keogh’s cymbals rising and falling behind him is as majestic as breakers hitting a beach. ‘Dear Lord’ is less intense, closer to the ballad style of an earlier era. The uptempo blues ‘Mr PC’ and ‘Bessie’s Blues’ find the whole band in devastating form, the leader especially demonstrating his talent for generating streams of compelling new melody despite the scalding momentum."

John Fordham - 1988