King puts on a majestic display

Those lucky enough to have caught Peter King's concerts in Reynards this week will have heard one of the saxophonists in jazz give what amounted to a series of master classes in jazz alto saxophone playing.

Fronting an accomplished rhythm section in Miles Drennan (piano), Jeremy Brown (bass) and Stephen Keogh (drums) - the last two brilliantly supported Brad Mehldau in Dublin recently - King produced a varied programme which made light of the problems posed by some difficult material, as well as producing some neat and surprising touches on the familiar.

King's major stylistic influence is Charlie Parker but he has also listened to John Coltrane and produced a personal synthesis which, at times, echoes the response of another great altoist, Phil Woods. It's a virtuoso style, requiring talented, alert and quick-witted players to react sympathetically to it, and King certainly got them here.

Challenging pieces such as Footprints, Yes And No and Joshua really threw down the gauntlet and drew an increasingly satisfying response from the rhythm section, although in the case of the up-tempo Yes And No the alto pyrotechnics imparted more of a sense of mathematics than anything else. Against this must be balanced the sheer authority with which King's solo was imbued, however; it's not given to many to be that good.

The altoist also seems to like springing surprises; unaccompanied saxophone performances of The Song Is You and Lush Life were suddenly changed, with the entry of the rhythm section, into I Can't Get Started and Naima respectively, the subsequent explorations of which seemed to benefit from the change of pace.

But the real heights were scaled in the second set, with glorious playing by everyone on My Man's Gone Now, The Song Is You and the aforementioned Naima and Joshua, whether on alto or, occasionally, soprano.