Saxophonist Mark Turner has developed a direct, unfussy style, shaped partly by his serene nature and religion, writes Ray Comiskey.

Tall, lean and softly spoken, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner exudes an aura of calm imperturbability, regardless of the circumstances in which he finds himself. Years ago, at the Guinness Jazz Festival in Cork, he was playing in a situation that, for reasons now tedious to recount, were somewhat less than congenial. Yet, although he was well aware of what was going on, he never complained or sought confrontation; he just did his own sweet thing.

That quiet, centred way of dealing with whatever life throws up is also reflected in his playing, which is direct and unfussy. To a casual ear it may come across as unassertive to a fault, yet his finest work has an inner strength that only gradually reveals itself to the listener.

His recording career underlines this, notably a series of releases under his own name for Warner Bros. Even with such heavyweights as tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Brad Mehldau and guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel on board, Turner was in his element. Like Turner, they're all part of a gifted generation of alumni of Boston's famed Berklee College of Music, and share the same collaborative ethic in music-making.

His connection with Warners is, alas, a thing of the past, but he's now part of a widely praised New York-based trio, with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard, which is fuelled by the same co-operative approach. Called Fly, the group developed almost accidentally three years ago. "Jeff was playing with Chick ," he explains, "and basically Chick had offered some of the members of his band - and maybe some others; I'm not sure - one or two tunes for this compilation record for his new label, Stretch.

"So he offered some to Jeff. Jeff didn't have a band at the time, so he asked Larry and me to do it. That's how it kind of started, basically, and then we played a gig or two. We actually played one gig at a place in New York called The Living Room and it went on from there. We did a tour of Italy in January, two or three years ago."

It's a very sparse instrumentation, with only one unequivocally melodic instrument and a loose-but-focused approach in which the lead often changes hands, or simply vanishes into three-way dialogue. Interdependence is total and there's no place to hide.

"That's true," he agrees. "I think we all like it very much and that's one of the main reasons we decided to do this. And all of us were playing in very harmonically-dense bands. I had my band and I was playing with Kurt Rosenwinkel, and those were harmonically very dense, and some other bands, too.

"And obviously Larry was with Brad and [guitarist John] Scofield, and Jeff with Chick and some other things. Part of it was that all of us just wanted to pare down and see what we could do just sonically as an instrumentation that facilitates that. I know I wanted to try light music that involves, harmonically speaking or melodically speaking, only two parts; basically it's just two-part writing.

"So I wanted to see how much I could get out of that, how much interest you could create. Maybe you have to create it in terms of . . . instruments changing roles, or the composition itself, like having lots of sections and so forth. We all wanted to do something more sparse than we were doing elsewhere."

His own playing is singularly cliché-free. In Cork a decade ago, the influence of the late tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh on him was clear. It's not so evident now. But weren't there other saxophonists that influenced him before that? "Let's see," he muses. "One time I was very influenced by Joe Henderson and John Coltrane for a long time, when I was in high school."

That was back in California in the 1970s, where he grew up in a house in which his parents, both music lovers, had a good jazz record collection. He also mentions older tenor players such as Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, and the perennial avant-gardist, Dewey Redman, father of Joshua.

Sonny Rollins, who made the landmark Village Vanguard recordings with a tenor-bass-drums line-up, was also a major influence. "Whenever there's a tenor trio, that's one of the trios in the canon that you're expected to know. You know what I mean? And then also that Rollins quartet with (drummer) Billy Higgins and (trumpeter) Don Cherry. Those ones I really like. You'll have noticed I didn't mention Charlie Parker. Obviously, I was influenced; everybody was influenced by Charlie Parker."

Regardless of influences, however, in jazz any musician will sooner or later reveal something of his own personality in his playing - his creativity, or curiosity, or drive to become better and express that personality. In Turner's case, his playing exudes both an enquiring cast of mind and the openness and sensitivity that go with it. And, curiously, serenity.

It's not a serenity, however, that dilutes his sensitivity to anything. Meeting him in Cork originally, I had the impression of a deeply spiritual person. As recent events have shown, there is plenty of suffering and death in the world, enough to underline the transience and vulnerability of everything about us. When we discussed this, I asked him where he fits in spiritually in all of this.

"I think about issues like the ones you're talking about," he acknowledges, "life and death and the meaning of various things that happen to us, or that we think about, or that we run into. Yes, I do practise a religion, and that's Buddhism. I've read about it for a long time, so I eventually decided to make some kind of commitment and actually practise it on a regular basis.

"But I also spend a lot of time reading and looking at other philosophies as well, and the major religions that I guess most people practise. I'm curious about what other people feel about these issues. I don't know how much I should say about it, but yes, I read about these issues and pay attention to them."

Bearing all of this in mind and setting it beside his situation as an artist, where does he think his need for self-expression will take him?

"I'll say a few things," he answers. "The main thing is just to practise music, obviously to become a better musician and so on, but also to have something central in your life to practice and hone, which influences other aspects of your life. And to learn, if you're a musician, or a motorcycle mechanic, or, you know, a lawyer, something like that, to learn through what you're doing something about yourself and about others.

"And also, the stronger you hone it you can become good enough at it, so you can make a living doing it as well. It serves a practical purpose as well. So I think that's my main thing - and then out of that other things come." I think I'd call it serenity.

* Fly will play at the Trinity Rooms, Limerick on February 3rd; the Half Moon Theatre, Cork on February 4th; the Sugar Club, Dublin on February 5th; and Spring & Air Brake, Belfast on February 6th.