Joey Baron, irrepressible drummer with the Julian Siegel Trio, took his jacket off as he sat down in the audience. A loose pack of playing cards splayed out of his jacket pocket indiscriminately down onto the floor – the Ace of Spades predominant! Which Joker was the polyglot John Surman going to play tonight?

Surman obviously enjoyed his own opening “cheap support” act – two initial soprano saxophone “duets”, a speed-jet across a sea of electronica and a cleverly amusing self-shadowing “chase” between Surman’s soprano and a closely shadowing echo.
Karen Krog, Surman’s long-term partner, then joined for further duetting between voice as instrument/song and Surman’s coaxing, supportive baritone saxophone. Surman and Krog had a Norwegian whale of a time. Forty-five minutes and an interval later, the real “stuff” – four straight Aces – hustled on to stage.

Surman bounced boyishly back, proudly introducing his “Brewster’s Roosters” for the live European premiere of his just released ECM album – the studious electric guitar of John Abercrombie, rollicking acoustic base of Drew Gress, and the all conquering drum experience that is Jack DeJohnette – with Surman alternating between a skipping, literally, soprano saxophone and straight-legged bounding, literally, baritone saxophone.

With fierce enthusiasm and growing energy and passion, the band powered its way through much of Surman’s new CD – amongst them a joyous “Hilltop Dance”, a bluesy “Counter Measures”, a sonorous interpretation of Strayhorn’s “Chelsea Bridge” – with Surman’s baritone sax finding an urgency to the fragility of Johnny Hodges alto saxophone original – concluding with a climactic rhythm and bluesy stomp of an earlier Surman composition from his extensive ECM back catalogue, “Going to the Dogs”.

The band encored with “Brewster’s Rooster”. The birthday party of Surman and his “peerless” collaborators left the stage to the entreaty of a solitary audience voice of farewell and thanks –“Happy Birthday”. Joey Baron had kept his pack of cards in his jacket pocket throughout the entire enrapt second set performance.

Murdo Murray