Martin Speake, the British alto saxophonist, must grow weary of hearing the name of Lee Konitz, the 75-year-old American master of improvisation, raised in the context of his work. But it is a complimentary comparison. Speake's sound is certainly his own, but he shares with Konitz a quirkiness of melodic line, a fondness for understatement and an enthusiasm for putting himself in constantly changing contexts that makes him a significant jazz presence, for all the obliqueness and lack of bravura in his music.
Speake has been touring the UK with Ethan Iverson, musical director of the Mark Morris dance company. The pair are well suited as partners. Speake relates well to pianists, and he and Iverson share many qualities (apart from their identically bald heads), the most notable one being a synthesis of very attentive listening and the technical and imaginative capacity to rapidly respond.
A quietly intense set at the Vortex began with Michel Legrand's You Must Believe in Spring, a delectable ballad caressed by Speake's soft, hooting tone and reluctant phrasing. It was given an initially minimalist but eventually multi-layered, even classical-sounding set of variations from Iverson. In his distinctive style, the pianist then investigated a Thelonious Monk-like waywardness of line over a steady, stride-like left hand on My Ideal - only to twist the left hand rhythmically so that it began to limp.
Speake found his most effective balance of the piercingly emphatic and the mutteringly undecided (a captivating, Konitz-like mannerism) on Everything Happens to Me, with his phrasing advancing in startling octave jumps. Iverson unexpectedly added a kind of train-rhythm drive to the piano accompaniment, reminiscent of early Abdullah Ibrahim, and then crashed outwards into a wilder free-jazz impressionism more suggestive of Cecil Taylor. He put a stealthy, almost threatening walk under Speake's airy figures on a Jobim ballad.
All in all, not a gig to blow your socks off; just creatively spontaneous duo playing, full of surprising twists and turns.
