Gascoyne/O’Higgins Quartet CD review – expert classic jazz-making

The UK’s Jazzizit label released the first part of the Real Note collection of postbop/swing pieces from bassist Geoff Gascoyne’s and saxist Dave O’Higgins’s band last year, and the followup is just as good at reworking familiar jazz materials as new songs based on old ones – much as the original bebop pioneers did. The famous Green Dolphin Street is reprofiled by O’Higgins as a slinky Brazilian shuffle called Shark Avenue. Meanwhile, I Got Rhythm appears as I Got Arrhythmia, a mixed-tempo, snappily emphatic piece featuring surging hard-boppish tenor solos, and languidly inventive improv from the melodic pianist Graham Harvey over Sebastiaan de Krom’s rimshots. A highlight is Gascoyne’s Five Moods, a stop-start bop-shaped fusion of swing and Latin time, featuring a subtly unfolded O’Higgins tenor solo, in which this versatile saxist occasionally recalls some of the dry insinuation of the late Ronnie Scott. There are also two straight-played standard songs: Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Lady and Broadway, the latter played at a scorching sprint, with O’Higgins freely weaving through the chords, and Harvey brightly splicing bop runs and prancing Fats Waller-like swing. It is expert classic jazz-making.