There's something in the diffidence of Kyle Eastwood's playing that suggests that his famous father has been a mixed blessing. Being jazz-loving Clint's bass-playing son (and sharing both his father's physiognomy and dislike of superfluous chat), Eastwood has found the doors of the world's jazz clubs swinging open for him.
But he knows that if the impact of his name on the box office is substantial, the downside is that starstruck audiences will watch but not listen, and jazz audiences will listen and complain about the hype.
Doubts about these things might well contribute to young Eastwood's curious combination of a withdrawn and retiring sound (as if he's not sure he wants you to hear him) with a bass technique of formidable agility and lyricism - and, for that matter, his band's tendency to sound as if it's practising in a college rehearsal room until it eventually wakes up to where it really is.
At the Pizza Express, against a noisy audience in the early stages, they delivered Sonny Rollins's bop classic Oleo as if they didn't expect anybody to take much note of it, and then a mellow Eastwood original that began in reflective mood and quickly wound up to a mid-tempo swinger.
A subtle Eastwood solo intro, focused on delicate melodic dances very high on the fingerboard, then opened out into an emphatic feature suggestive of a McCoy Tyner band, but even by the fourth tune - a crisp account of Tom Waits's I Beg Your Pardon - the atmosphere of hesitant shyness hadn't yet receded.
But then it did on an original from Eastwood and his pianist Jon Regen, the North African-tinged Marrakesh. The percussive McCoy Tyner flavour that frequently surfaced in the show was a powerful characteristic here, but saxophonist Joel Frahm sounded far less rehearsed on soprano than he had on tenor, the ensemble interplay jumped a couple of notches, and a confident eagerness entered the performance.
Thelonious Monk's We See, played in double-tempo, found drummer Sunny Jain skimming along, and Joel Frahm was by now delivering a sax line that had a volatile life and destiny of its own.
Frahm's quirkily catchy original Paint the Fence completed the recovery, by which time the audience was hooked on the music and not just on how young Kyle's cheekbones caught the light.
