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| ...there was plenty of jazz dance footwork going on during the
course of the evening. O'Higgins joked before he went on that there were going to be more note in an hour than were legally allowed, and he was true to his word. The tempi were never slower then medium fast-some ferocious. Dizzy Gillespie's "Bebop" was taken at a speed I would call brave, were it not for the fact that O'Higgins's tenor sax tore into it with the virtuosity of a Brecker, While I felt quite sorry for the double bassist during "Caravan". Playing four in a bar at that rate of knots is tough on the four fingers. "North Station" was an authentic mixture of the sixties wah-wah guitar alternating with swing, with a double time latin coda. "Sludge Pump" was the perfect encore, a greasy, car mechanic, roll your oily sleeves up outing of jazz funk. O'Higgins and his pianist, Tom Cawley, are superb players. At the risk of causing dissent in the band, I would say that they were in a different class to the rest of the musicians, who, while good, need to project themselves more. Cawley provided several furious, commanding displays, but O'Higgins, well-does he know just how good he is? When it comes to bop of any kind, on either soprano or tenor saxophones, he is, live, one of our few world class players, capable of holding his own with the Americans. O'Higgins wouldn't be out of place standing in for Bob Berg in a line up of Steps Ahead the included Jeff "Tain" Watts and Joey Calderazzo. I hope he does take that place some day, because if he doesn't swim with the big fish he might not realise the he's one of them, too. Sholto Byrnes The Independent Review Back to top |
