David Sanchez
Jazz Cafe
***

David Sanchez is the young Puerto Rican saxophonist who started jazz life as a Dizzy Gillespie protege, an endorsement that opened plenty of doors. Unlike many horn- players of his generation, John Coltrane's sound hasn't filled his head (though on this week's evidence the late master's density of texture and whirling crescendos are preoccupying Sanchez more than they used to), and he often suggests an assured blend of Sonny Rollins's big tone and Joe Henderson's hauntingly mournful one.

Several influential premier-league American saxophonists have passed through the UK in recent months - Joshua Redman, Michael Brecker and James Carter among them - and Sanchez shared much of Redman's and Carter's big media welcome in the 90s. Yet the Puerto Rican's playing has sometimes seemed adept but faintly characterless compared to that of his peers, as if he were just a sideman in bands he happened to be leading. But that wasn't the case tonight. Though he complained of tiredness at the end of a long tour, Sanchez sounded particularly vigorous, and his percussion-strong band worked up a considerable heat.

As with much of his work, the set was mostly rugged, blurting postbop with a Latin tinge - the latter element growing in dominance through the show. A two-sax front line gave an attractively serpentine weave and wriggle to the ensemble melodies (Sanchez's altoist Miguel Zenon also liked a staccato strut on top of the beat, an engaging contrast with the leader's fluid rhythmic waywardness), and percussionist Pernell Santurnino's church- bell chimes against bustling congas and Indian drum sounds imparted unusual textures to the undertow. Santurnino and drummer Antonio Sanchez (often abetted by a fine regular Sanchez pianist, Edsel Gomez) stoked up increasingly stormy, heaving polyrhythms in the later stages, with the horns eagerly trading call-and-response figures over them.

It was a very animated business by comparison with David Sanchez's sometimes rather statuesque earlier London gigs, and uncovered a lot more of the promise Dizzy Gillespie must have heard a decade ago.