Wednesday night's concert in the smartly refurbished Renards saw one of the great trumpet craftsmen, Lew Soloff, joining tenor saxophonist Richie Buckley for some straight-ahead blowing in the mainstream bop idiom. Their styles are complementary; Soloff is out of Davis and Gillespie, while Buckley, who can summon up the ghosts of Getz and Coltrane, with hints of a host of other tenors along the way, can fit with a chameleon-like ability to vary his tone into almost any context.
Ably supported by a fine rhythm section led by Robin Aspland (piano/keyboards) with Orlando Le Fleming (bass) and Sebastian de Krom (drums), they dealt capably with a programme of originals and some standards which, at its best, underlined the durability of the style. A first set, which included Autumn Leaves, The Way You Look Tonight and three good Buckley compositions - Waltz For Stan, In Seven and Ballad - displayed the group's confident, highly competent approach without producing anything more than that. Tiredness - they had finished recording an album less than three hours previously - may have been a contributory factor.
Whatever mild lethargy may have suffused the first set was forgotten by the trio's opening of the second, a cohesive always absorbing performance of Chick Corea's Humpty Dumpty. It seemed to galvanise the front line, too. A sparkling uptempo waltz original by Soloff, Marilyn, named and written in honour of his mother raised the concert on to another level. With Soloff recalling trumpet master Clifford Brown and Buckley hinting at Sonny Rollins, it was reminiscent of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet of almost a half-century ago. This and a beautiful response to the gorgeous ballad, Old Folks, were among the highlights of a more lively second set - although it was a pity the group as a whole had to contend with an out-of-tune piano.
