Brian Smith is a jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 saxophonist and flautist from New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

.

Smith studied piano in his youth but was primarily an autodidact on reeds. He played locally in pop and jazz groups before moving to England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in 1964, where he played with Alexis Korner

Alexis Korner

Alexis Korner was a blues musician and radio broadcaster, who has sometimes been referred to as "a Founding Father of British Blues"...

's Blues Incorporated

Blues Incorporated

Blues Incorporated were a British R&B band in the early 1960s, led by Alexis Korner and featuring at various times Jack Bruce, Charlie Watts, Terry Cox, Ginger Baker, Long John Baldry, Ronnie Jones, Danny Thompson, Graham Bond, Cyril Davies, Malcolm Cecil and Dick Heckstall-Smith.-History:Korner ...

. Following this he played at Ronnie Scott

Ronnie Scott

Ronnie Scott was an English jazz tenor saxophonist and jazz club owner.-Life and career:Ronnie Scott was born in Aldgate, east London, into a family of Russian Jewish descent on his father's side, and Portuguese antecedents on his mother's. Scott began playing in small jazz clubs at the age of...

's Jazz Club in 1966-67 and in the big band

Big band

A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...

s of Tubby Hayes

Tubby Hayes

Edward Brian "Tubby" Hayes was an English jazz multi-instrumentalist, best known for his tenor saxophone playing in groups with fellow sax player Ronnie Scott and with trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest British jazz instrumentalists.- Early life :Hayes was born...

 (1969) and Maynard Ferguson

Maynard Ferguson

Maynard Ferguson was a Canadian jazz musician and bandleader. He came to prominence playing in Stan Kenton's orchestra, before forming his own band in 1957...

 (1969-74). He worked with the group Nucleus

Nucleus (band)

Nucleus were a pioneering jazz-rock band from Britain who continued in different forms from 1969 to 1989. In their first year they won first prize at the Montreux Jazz Festival, released the album Elastic Rock, and performed both at the Newport Jazz Festival and the Village Gate jazz club.They were...

 from 1969 to 1982, and also with Mike Westbrook

Mike Westbrook

Michael John David 'Mike' Westbrook is an English jazz pianist, composer, and writer of orchestrated jazz pieces.-Early work:Mike Westbrook grew up in Torquay...

 (1969), Neil Ardley

Neil Ardley

Neil Richard Ardley was a prominent English jazz pianist and composer, who also made a name as the author of more than 100 popular books on science and technology, and on music.-Brief biography:...

 (1969, 1976), Mike Gibbs (1970), the Spontaneous Music Ensemble

Spontaneous Music Ensemble

The Spontaneous Music Ensemble was a loose collection of free improvising musicians convened beginning in the mid-1960s by the late South London-based jazz drummer/trumpeter John Stevens and alto and soprano saxophonist Trevor Watts...

 (1970-71), and Keith Tippett

Keith Tippett

Keith Tippett is a British jazz pianist and composer.Tippett, the son of a local police officer, went to Greenway Boys Secondary Modern school in Southmead, Bristol. He formed his first jazz band called The KT7 whilst still at school and they performed numbers popular at the time by The Temperance...

 (1971). He also worked with Pacific Eardrum in 1975-76 and Paz in 1976.

In 1982, Smith returned to New Zealand, where he began playing with his own quartet. His 1984 album Southern Excursions was named Australian Jazz Record of the Year. He worked with Frank Gibson, Jr.

Frank Gibson, Jr.

Frank Gibson, Jr., born 1946, New Zealand, is a jazz drummer and drum tutor. His father, also Frank Gibson, was drummer and leader of the first rock’n’roll band in the country, Frank Gibson’s Rock’n’Rollers....

 later in the 1980s and was based out of Auckland

Auckland

The Auckland metropolitan area , in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with residents, percent of the country's population. Auckland also has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world...

. His Moonlight Sax albums were chart successes in New Zealand.

Discography

• Southern Excursions (Ode Records
  Ode Records
  Ode Records was a record label, started by Lou Adler in 1967 after he sold Dunhill Records to ABC Records. It was distributed by CBS Records until 1969. Between 1970 and 1976 the label was distributed by A&M Records, from 1976 onward it was again distributed by CBS Records.Adler deactivated the...
  
  , 1984)
• Moonlight Sax (Ode, 1990)
• Moonlight Sax 2 (Ode, 1991)