During Sunday night's showcase for the up-and-coming twentysomethings of the UK jazz scene, there was a long set that could have come straight off a 1960s Art Blakey/Lee Morgan Blue Note disc. So the night was hardly an indication that scratchy DJs and loops have now filled the jazz horizons of a younger generation.
A long bill presenting several new bands was a mixture of the tentative, the studiously expert, the enthusiastic, the devoted and the revealing, as is probably par for the course at such an event.
In the you'll-be-hearing-from-them category, the two most heartening performances of the evening came from tenor sax Pete Wareham (a prize-winning but fairly conventional newcomer who has blossomed over the past couple of years) and drummer Seb Rochford, who now sounds like the best new percussionist on the UK scene since Mark Mondesir.
Wareham led his own Acoustic Ladyland ensemble, inspired by jazz and Jimi Hendrix. He also formed half of a captivating two-tenor dialogue with former Loose Tubes player Mark Lockheart in Seb Rochford's promising new group, Polar Bear.
The influence of the Gil Evans and Birth of the Cool style of ensemble writing was apparent in Gwilym Simcock's Nonet, with its unorthodox instrumental textures - French horns, bass clarinets, some fine flute and vibes soloing. But singer Nea Lynn's combination of raw soulfulness and sometimes hesitant swing occasionally sounded dropped in from a different band. The Blue Note element was provided by the Fishwick Brothers (Steve on trumpet, Matt on drums), who catch the crackling, sidelong 1960s hard bop sound with uncanny empathy, and seem set to start a whole new bebop revival for fans of their generation.
But it was Rochford's Polar Bear that sounded the most mature, their spontaneous connections allowing the music to ebb and flow. Rochford is a wonderful drummer of delicate touch - he often uses just brushes and bass drum accents - and effortlessly multi-layered rhythms. His fluency allows soloists to lean back on him and stretch out. Wareham and Lockheart took advantage of this with long stretches of tenor-sax dialogue that showed some of the reserved deliberation of the Cool School, played over lightly propulsive grooves in the style of an old Ornette Coleman band. The subtle addition of a cellist and viola player later in the set confirmed that the broadminded Rochford's interests don't begin and end at the jazz racks in the record shop.
