Tenor sax icon Scott Hamilton seems to lead as relaxed a life as his playing suggests. He’s based in Florence, Italy, playing festivals and club dates throughout Europe, occasionally visiting the US, where he was born in 1954. By the time he hit Manhattan in the 1970s, you’d have sworn he was born a few decades earlier, so much did his sound conjure the world of Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins. He took up residence at Eddie Condon’s on 54th Street, recording on Chiaroscuro and Famous Door before being swept up by Concord Jazz both as leader and sideman.
He worked alongside so many jazz greats that it’s unnecessary to list them—it’s a history of the last half-century of jazz with some seeming anachronisms, like Scott’s stint with a late-career Benny Goodman band. But he’s always sounded at his best in a small-group setting, and that’s where he is in Classics, his latest international release. Pianist Jan Lundgren and bassist Hans Backenroth are both from Sweden; bassist Kristian Leth is Danish, as is the Stunt Records label. And the title acknowledges the fact that each of the nine numbers is based on a tune from the classical-music world.
As “Theme from Swan Lake” swings into a dark-hued, agitated beat, you’d swear it was a ’40s standard, in the vein of “On Green Dolphin Street.” But it is, in fact, a familiar tune drawn from the Tchaikovsky ballet. Aft
