Scott Hamilton

In the fourth decade of a jazz career in which he has always made a subtle art sound easy, US saxophonist still caresses old standards with the same urbane ecstasy he always has. In its hip-hop or contemporary-classical borrowings, free-improv extremes or north European minimalist whisperings, jazz is now a very different music to the sleek, swinging one Hamilton absorbed from his dad’s records as a boy. But nobody can accuse Hamilton of living in the past: it would be like telling someone they shouldn’t still be in love with a fascinating old partner.