Last Thursday “the spin @ the wheatsheaf” hosted the Geoff Gascoyne Quartet, but not as we know it. The eponymous leader was absent, his wife having delivered a baby unexpectedly early the previous day. Also absent were all the charts for the compositions that Geoff had written for his quartet. What’s more, pianist Gareth Williams had strained his back, and was wary of lugging an electronic keyboard in and out of his car, so he decided to play the guitar instead – the other musicians had never even heard him play the guitar before. All in all, enough pre-performance disruption and injury for an entire World Cup squad.

Was the evening an anticlimax? Not a bit of it. Deputising for Geoff Gascoyne was Laurence Cottle, one of the finest bass guitarists in the country. If I hadn’t seen Gareth Williams on piano at Ronnie Scott’s, I wouldn’t have guessed that the guitar was his second instrument. And as for the charts, who needs them? They just played some favourite standards, and with so much improvising talent around, it scarcely mattered what the starting point was.

Ben Castle on tenor and soprano saxes was a revelation. On the funky blues that they opened with, he built up satisfyingly from short riffs to longer and more complex phrases as he gradually turned up the heat. On the next number, Speak Low, he accomplished the more difficult task of a slow decrescendo as his solo finished in a whisper. Then on a dauntingly fast Scrapple from the Apple he unleashed an attack of such sustained ferocity and drive that the guitar and bass dropped out, leaving him alone with the drums. With a youth and a confident stage presence on his side, Castle has a bright future.

Gareth Williams on guitar was more Southern States than south Wales, so blues-soaked was his playing. His passion always communicated itself to the audience, and he always managed to tell a coherent story. Sebastiaan de Krom on drums was unobtrusively effective until his solo on Scrapple, one of the most intelligent and technically accomplished that I’ve heard. Laurence Cottle kept entertaining us by running up what sounded like musical blind alleys, than emerging with a smile back onto the main road.

A splendid evening when sheer talent made light of all the difficulties.

Roger van Schaick