Any career that can proclaim work with such illustrious names as John Coltrane and John Lennon inevitably confronts severely high expectations. John Tchicai, who has recorded with these twentieth century musical monoliths, shoulders this anticipation with a casual grace and natural, unassuming demeanour. Since the 1960s he has held a place on the rostrum of jazz musicians who pioneered the European avant-garde movement, by marrying the jazz idiom with musical traditions of his mixed European and African provenance.

Tchicai invests rhythmic and tonal drama into simple, coarsely-ground motifs by brutally flinging them to their abrasive extremes. Much to the audience’s vexation Tchicai’s attempts to integrate clauses of poetic thought into the fabric of this performance were compromised by a glaring failure of sound engineering which prevented the vocal mic from supporting his soft, cavernous tones. This did not however detract from the vivacity of the group’s interplay as bassist John Edwards and drummer Tony Marsh provided highly illustrative rhythmic and percussive textures, and fiercely eloquent conversational duet interludes. A fine performance therefore, that demonstrated the openness and expressive power of the avant-garde tradition.

- Joseph Kassman-Tod