HEARING the veteran saxophonist Harrison Smith play recently at the Vortex, in a trio with the startling and beautiful discord of pianist Liam Noble and the arch-master of percussive invention Mark Sanders, was a sonic commentary on his words, describing the trio’s musicianship as born from “an openness of mind, listening to what is happening and reaching in terms of notes, colours and energies” – to which I would add, an astonishing lifetime’s musicianship.

Smith is a son of the Durham coalfields, born in the mining village of Murton in 1946. His father worked as a bus driver, a butcher and in a fish and chip shop and his mother was a shopworker. Music was central to his life: his grandfather played organ in the local church and sang in Durham Cathedral Choir.

He began to learn alto saxophone at 13, taking lessons from his village teacher, Mr Penman, who took him to rehearsals of the Herrington Colliery Band, which he joined, playing clarinet, to park performances and to the marching and playing in Durham City for the annual Durham Miners’ Gala. “The sense of community, of learning and playing together in the village was very strong,” he remembers.

“As I improved I started playing in big bands, dance bands and soul groups in pubs and workingmen’s clubs. In my late teens I got interested in jazz. My first influences were Stan Getz and Count Basie’s Band, as well as longtime favourites John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson.

“By then I had switched to tenor sax. I played with two jazz groups: the Alex Hand Band had a loose approach and a tighter jazz-rock group led by Alan Glen. There was a lot of live music going on at that time.

“In 1972 I went to the summer jazz course at Barry, South Wales. I found various teachers from mainstream to avant-garde and did my best to take it all in. One session was with bassist Barry Guy conducting London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra pieces. A few months later he invited me to tour with them. Of course I said, ‘Yes please!’ That’s when I took the plunge and moved to London. I sat in and did some gigs with contacts I had made at Barry.

“One group I played with was with New York trumpeter Jim Dvorak and South African drummer Brian Abrahams. The band District Six was just starting and Brian asked Jim and I to join.

“District Six lasted eight years and we played in many countries like Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the UK. We strongly supported the Anti-Apartheid movement and did several fundraising benefits for the ANC in venues from Aberdeen to London.”

District Six albums are not easy to find, but well worth the search. The album To Be Free, with Blue Notes pianist Chris McGregor has Harrison playing a long, deeply moving solo dedicated to Winnie Mandela called Reasons of the Heart.

Harrison says his influences include Bartok, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, so it shouldn’t be surprising that he gels so beautifully with the ex-classical pianist Marilyn Crispell and the Bermondsey-born veteran free drummer of Hugeonot roots, Eddie Prevost.

Their live trio album ConcertOto is a record of powerful inventiveness, lyricism and free spirit. He compares this trio with the Noble/Sanders/Smith trio that performs regularly at the Vortex.

“Our music is very different but the two trios have much in common. The underlying feature is a sense of balance between individuals and the group, a sense of unity. Marc Medwin said what it is all about in his liner notes on the ConcertOTO album: “the subtlest alchemies of hearing, reacting and proceeding along the outward and inward paths of spontaneous creation.”

Alchemies — boyhood coal turned into golden notes of maturity from the birdsong of his soprano saxophone to the subterranean melodism and pitsong of his bass clarinet, which took my mind so suddenly as he played at the Vortex to Ewan McColl’s song of the north-east miners, The Big Hewer: “Out of the hard black coalface I was born,/ Go down!”

I asked him whether his sound still echoed his beginnings in the Durham colliery villages.

“My early life in the north-east with its long history of neglect and danger — God knows what could happen in the pit — its sense of community and struggle, openness and resilience is definitely a part of who I am. Whether this is reflected in my music, I don’t really know. Perhaps it’s down to the listener to decide.”

CONCERTOTO is released by Matchless Records.