Folk and Jazz: Tommy Smith's latest incarnation: a global gathering of sound

LOOK up a dictionary definition of "karma" and you'll find "Hinduism, Buddhism. The principle of retributive justice determining a person's state of life and the state of his incarnations as the effect of his past deeds". Or you might prefer to summarise it more glibly as "what goes around comes around".

For saxophonist, composer and bandleader Tommy Smith, whose interest in matters spiritual has already manifested itself in his powerful Torah suite, inspired by the creation story found in Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths, karma can also apply to the interplay between jazz musicians.

"Firstly it clearly highlights the cause and effect, karmic nature of the music," Smith suggests. "The causes can't be seen - stuff like our thought processes, listening, inspiration - but the effects are experienced not only by the listeners with all their senses, but by the musicians as well."

Thus the name of his latest quartet, and its new, eponymous album, is Karma, and a dazzling showcase it is for the multifarious sounds and cultural influences Smith has soaked up over the years, from Scottish, Irish, Arabic and Japanese folk music to jazz-rock fusion and even heavy metal.

Smith's fellow karmic messengers are two long-standing collaborators, Steve Hamilton on piano and synthesiser, and drummer Alyn Cosker, and a newer name, the formidable young six-string bass guitarist Kevin Glasgow.

There are clearly folk-influenced tracks on the album, such as Land of Heroes and the Irish melody Star of the County Down, which see Smith in lyrical form, sounding at times like a Scots-accented version of the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek. These tracks rub shoulders with the middle-Eastern whirl of Tomorrow, the hard-nosed drive of the opening Cause and Effect and the chunky, Weather Report-ish sax and synth duelling of Good Deed. The title track, far from drifting in Zen serenity, features Smith's sax snorting in belligerent dialogue with Glasgow's funky bass.

Folk tunes, homegrown or otherwise, have long been a strand in Smith's music. "Almost as a result of the globalisation of jazz," he says, "you've got different influences, in individual countries. What I've done is collected lots of folk songs from my journeys, so there are some from Japan and Ireland and Yemen."

Smith made his first trip to Japan last year as part of the powerful trio with bassist Arild Andersen and drummer Paolo Vinaccia, but he has nurtured an interest in Japanese culture ever since, as an 18-year-old, he played alongside pianist Makoto Ozone in Gary Burton's band. More recently, as director of the Scottish National jazz Orchestra, he collaborated with the Mugenkyo Taiko Drummers in his World of Gods suite, based on Japanese folk tunes."Makoto introduced me to a lot of things and I've always been a fan of Kurusawa and the composer Takemitsu, and when I finally went there it was fantastic."

The Japanese connection manifests itself strikingly on Karma in the track Sun, which Smith introduces with a limpid melody on the shakuhatchi bamboo flute. "It's a difficult instrument to even get a sound out of, never mind play," he muses. "It's all about blowing goodness down the bamboo pipe."

Further deliberating on that cause-and-effect business, Smith points out that "there are many kinds of karma and many religions that have karma. For me it takes all shapes and forms, and it's not like an account, where good deeds will cancel bad deeds."

It's all very different, of course, from good old-fashioned Scots Calvinist predestinarianism. Who knows, perhaps a future project might see Smith take on that classic of Scots gothic and theological satire, James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, although, rather like the muscular and protean music of his Karma band, nothing is predictable.

• Karma is out now on Spartacus Records. For further details visit www.tommysmith.co.uk