The recent impact on the UK scene of two gifted saxophonists has made the familiar point that the jazz tradition can constantly be refreshed by players who sound as if they have only just discovered it - as long as those players have the right chemistry of imagination, dynamism and technique. Israeli composer/improviser Gilad Atzmon is one example of the species, as is the imperiously playful Italian Renato D'Aiello.
D'Aiello came to the UK from Turin, originally with an Italian fusion band. He went on to discover the jazz-pub life that is the backbone of the UK scene outside London, and settled into it as a route back to his roots. But everything about D'Aiello's saxophone-playing suggests he has grown up on much bigger stages than these. If you closed your eyes and forgot you were in Croydon, the sound of his raucous, free-rolling tenor-sax lines made you feel as if you had been warped into Copenhagen's Cafe Montmartre sometime around 1967, and that the saxophonist was really Dexter Gordon. Except that D'Aiello's take on the past is too explosively personal for him to simply play the retro game.
D'Aiello appeared tonight with the fine bop guitarist Phil Lee and Gilad Atzmon's excellent rhythm section of bassist Ollie Hayhurst and the effervescent Asaf Sirkis on drums. Bye Bye Blackbird was launched with exhalatory Coleman Hawkins-like smears and swoops. It quickly gave way to a Phil Lee guitar solo that began in Jim Hall's choosy single-line territory and ended up in Wes Montgomery's, followed by a long D'Aiello solo of broad swing, earthily inflected double-time and an occasional Coltranesque upper-atmosphere wail.
D'Aiello couples a domineering, get-out-of-my-way sound with bounce and spontaneity, but he is also capable of considerable tenderness, as his account of Wayne Shorter's Infant Eyes revealed. He sang Body and Soul like a more coherent Chet Baker, and finished with headlong uptempo bebop. D'Aiello loves the jazz lineage and festoons it with fresh ideas, but seems to have plenty more directly personal and modern notions up his sleeve. The man is such a walking music-box, it would be surprising if it were any other way.
