Kenny Davern seemed a shade perplexed towards the end of his gig. "What's the schedule here?" he asked. "You sure you want me to play Nagasaki?" "Look, this joke really is funny if you think about it." But no sense of trouble escaped the masterly musician from New York state whenever the clarinet was in his mouth. Perhaps the rather passive second-set audience gave Davern the sense that he was dropping the glittering gems of his improvisations into a well. But as ever, his exquisitely fragile sound, the unpredictability of his phrasing, and his sophisticated storytelling imagination reaffirmed his status as one of the great contemporary jazz improvisers. Not that anything he plays is contemporary music in the familiar meaning of the term.
Davern learned his craft in swing and Dixieland music, and began building his reputation in the 1950s and 1960s. He is a forceful musical personality despite his apparent offhandedness, dropping occasional hints of an agenda - that the technically correct and melodically orthodox Benny Goodman had too big an influence on jazz clarinet, for instance. Davern's playing is closer to that of clarinet eccentric Pee Wee Russell, in the sharpness of his contrasts, devious melodic development, and juggling of prolonged textural and tonal effects against more conventional legato lines.
Davern was accompanied by his usual UK partners: pianist Brian Lemon (almost as foxily minimalist an operator as Davern himself) and Allan Ganley on drums, plus Alec Dankworth on bass. Davern liked Dankworth's quick, song-like bass solo on Earl Hines's Rosetta so much, he challenged him to some four-bar chorus swapping at the close. The clarinettist kept to a gurgly, surreptitious whisper against the bassist's sinewy phrasing and powerful attack.
The mid-tempo Pee Wee's Blues was a delightful exercise in hovering trills, dynamic contrasts and delicate, weaving notes, like flowers in a breeze. A request for Sunny Side of the Street was greeted with an amiably jaunty canter through the chords. And Davern transformed Nagasaki from a rather routine melody into alternations of seamless, skidding runs, while Dankworth added a fast solo packed with quotes, including the 1950s Miles Davis Quintet's signature tune, The Theme. If Davern was concerned by the diversion into modern jazz, he didn't make a sign.
· Kenny Davern is at the Little Barrow Hotel, Lichfield (01283 762120), tonight, then tours.
