MUSIC

Bebop Club, Bristol (Fri 18 Nov)

It’s a quintessentially Bebop gig, this, as club mainman Andy Hague sets up players and arrangements for a top quintet to welcome annual visitor Benn Clatworthy. The Los Angeles-based tenor saxman is clearly a draw – tables have to be taken out to make room for extra chairs – and the room warms quickly during timely opener Kenny Garrett’s ‘November 15^th’. The band starts cautiously, Clatworthy’s sax and Hague’s trumpet tightly synched over Jim Blomfield’s restrained piano. It’s Will Harris’s first bass solo that starts to open up the time and rhythm, teasing drummer Simon Gore to match the changes. The lively ‘Con Alma’ has zip, and if it still feels measured there’s no doubting the skills on display, Blomfield especially catching the Hispanic vocabulary of Latin jazz. Happily the corsets start to slip for ‘Woody Shaw’ as Harris and Gore race away with Blomfield chopping it up and the two frontmen jump straight in. Finally Clatworthy’s fondness for Coltrane asserts itself leaving the smart arrangement as a foundation for fine, fast and even funny hard bop solo playing across the board. It’s one of several high points in an excellent acoustic evening, with the warm (and occasionally schmaltzy) Mr Clatworthy perfectly framed in assured and memorable quintet playing. (Tony Benjamin)

Copyright Tony Bemjamin 2011