" data-original-title="" title="">Eric Reed plays at times with a lightning-quick, cat-like touch, at others with slow, deep resonance, lush and lyrical. He can change from one to the other in the nanosecond it takes his brain to command his deft fingers; the sounds that pour out of the big black Steinway piano are joyous, sad, loving, moving. There's a looseness to the feel of his playing that, as he has said, allows the music to "breathe."

To open his quartet's recent set at SMOKE Jazz & Supper Club, he chose a soft, bluesy gospel tune, "Calvary," playing on this Sunday evening with all of the heartfelt spirit of person of faith. Reed is a musician, and a man, of deep spirituality that he has carried with him since his earliest days as a prodigy playing gospel in church in West Philadelphia to his current home in Los Angeles; his sense of music as a gift from above—as love incarnate—not only reflects much of what he chooses to play, but it also informs his professional purpose.

The quartet's second tune, "Someone Else's Love," opened with Reed's somber piano solo, an ocean of notes sculpting a tune in time before it changed gears with