Andy Sheppard's live programme is a shrewdly accessible balance of oppositional forces: most dramatically rugged improv set against graceful, movie-score worldbeat themes. But its secret is that it doesn't sound calculating or manipulative. Like a British Pat Metheny, he is a formidable and fearless jazz improviser and a classy contemporary Tin Pan Alley tunesmith rolled into one.
The result of this chemistry has been that Sheppard, at a boyish 43, and with one of the biggest regular followings for a UK jazz musician, has kept the jazz hardcore and added a steady flow of passing trade who like his catchy themes and lazily stretching African and Caribbean grooves. If he drops into squalling jazz free fall every now and again, it's with the teasing promise that you'll catch one of his graceful, softly whistling tunes creeping back in sooner or later if you keep your ears pinned back.
Sheppard has been at the Pizza Express for a full-house, five-night run - the curtain-raiser to a week-long showcase by the adventurous indie label he records for (composer Colin Towns's Provocateur). The saxophonist's repertoire is largely drawn from his two latest CDs, Learning to Wave and Dancing Man and Woman, but Sunday's show was a powerful blend of hard-driving ensemble spontaneity and the cool set-pieces of the compositions, with little of Sheppard's occasional tendency to preoccupied, water-treading doodlings. The presence of a deputy keyboard player in Spencer Cousins (covering for the formidable Steve Lodder) also kept down the vaporous synth textures that sometimes give Sheppard shows a somnambulent air.
The sensuous sway of Natural brought an animatedly conversational guitar/sax duet between Sheppard and John Parricelli (as if in subconscious tribute to Steely Dan, who were playing the same night, the two suggested some of that band's loose, singing, jazz-rock feel). Sheppard recalled the brooding, restrained heat of the Argentinian Gato Barbieri in the Mediterranean shimmer of Sugar Beach Hotel. Dancing Man and Woman turned from lyrical folksiness to a kind of manic rumba under pressure from the ingenious Paul Clarvis's percussion - a typical Sheppard counterweight to the spiky free jazz of Looking for Ornette.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible
