Violinist Nigel Kennedy is on the road to promote his album Blue Note Sessions. Recorded in New York with a starry lineup, the tracklist demonstrates his knowledge of 1960s hard-bop tunes such as Duke Pearson's Sudel and Horace Silver's Song For My Father.
He opens the live set with Pearson's Chili Peppers, playing a solid-body electric violin, and sounding less reticent than on the recordings. Yet there is something uncomfortable in the way he rides a swinging four-four pulse, the engine of mainstream jazz - he seems happier on the Latin sections of Sudel. The ensemble is occasionally augmented by trumpeter Tomasz Novak, his timbre adding a welcome brightness to the frontline of violin and Tomasz Grzegorski's tenor sax.
The gig takes a sharp turn for the better as Kennedy picks up his acoustic violin to play the third movement from Bartok's Sonata for Solo Violin (1944). He performs the piece with the kind of full-throttle passion you wish he would inject into his jazz solos; the Ronnie's audience is stunned.
When the band returns to play Kennedy's own Stranger in a Strange Land, a spacious, Herbie Hancock-like tone poem, his musicians - all Poles - sound more comfortable. The Spanish-tinged chord sequence permits Kennedy to soar freely over Pawel Dobrowolski's imaginative and sensitive drumming.
They raise the bar again for Ivory Joe Hunter's I Almost Lost My Mind, a churchy blues with a dirty, slow groove and some thrilling organ from Piotr Wylezol. Kennedy delivers a grandstanding solo, perhaps shooting for Hendrix-like intensity rather than jazz subtlety. The set ends with an untitled original whose folky, even-quaver feel further demonstrates the freshness and potential of the band.
· Ends tomorrow. Box office: 020-7439 0747.
