REVIEW: 19 May 2005

Dave O‘Higgins

I first saw Dave O’Higgins in the back room of a pub in Oxford when he was just emerging onto the national jazz scene. He played with fire and eloquence marking him as a player to watch out for. So it is no surprise that he is now one of the foremost exponents on tenor and soprano in the country. He has a formidable technique and a manner of phrasing that makes his playing increasingly recognisable above the general surge of sax players on the scene.

Playing with the Spin band of Pete Oxley guitar, Mark Doffman drums and, on this occasion, the wonderful Yaron Stavi bass, O’Higgins started the evening with Calderazzo’s Midnight Voyage. This elegant and ever-popular tune is a challenge for any tenor player for in the background stands a seminal recording by the great Michael Brecker. But O’Higgins brought his own feel to the tune and immediately showed his musicianship by building a solo from long notes towards his trademark whirlwind of chromatic arpeggios only to slide back towards the slow phrases of the tune, keeping far away from other interpretations. It was a great performance that O’Higgins kept up through a spectrum of tunes from Jobim and Monk to Metheny and including Pete Oxley’s delicate yet tricky original, Blues to Gilad (to Israeli saxophonist Gilad Atzmon). In Monk’s Blue Monk there was some fine interplay between O’Higgins and Yaron Stavi on bass and here O’Higgins showed he is not at all a linear soloist by fitting the shape of his ideas throughout a long and complex set of choruses to the chromatic angularity of Monk’s tune in which so many players fall back on their own blues phrases.

O’Higgins was well supported by the Spin’s resident musicians despite a certain hesitancy in the groove, particularly in the first set, which created a sense of musical disquiet. But this was well covered by the professionalism of the individual playing with some sensitive work from Pete Oxley on electric acoustic and some particularly energetic and imaginative drum breaks from Mark Doffman.

© Paul Medley