A long established veteran of the European club scene, saxophonist Munch Manship endured a decidedly poor turnout for this gig. Instructing the meagre audience to huddle together for warmth, he led his quartet through a set that ranged from smooth Coleman Hawkins-style swing through to classic Clifford Brown bop and beyond.
Manship is a technically resourceful musician whose repertoire and overall playing style hint at a long career playing to rather conservative audiences. The first piece was a lilting ballad that showcased his warm round tone and effortless sense of swing. This was jazz at its most familiar and comforting, and pianist Vinnie Parker's fluid, almost rhapsodic flights of fancy only just kept the wine bar ambience at bay.
The second number, Without a Song, was a frisky chunk of hard bop, drummer Tony Lawson turning the screw with some fearsome whipcracking snare accents. The full range of Manship's abilities began to emerge as he launched into a blazingly intelligent solo, scaling peak after peak with a seemingly limitless supply of energy and ideas. The band then shifted gears with a bluesy romp called Sally, which was ushered in by a fruity electric Wurlitzer sound from Parker's electric keyboard.
Manship switched to flute for the song Carnival, a sensual seduction that in less sensitive hands could have sounded banal. Rather less appealing was My One and Only Love, where the combination of saccharine saxophone and Parker's now thoroughly cheesy electric keyboard evoked the polite sophistication of mid-1980s Dire Straits.
Although there was some blistering hard bop still to come, the quartet seemed to be on a slippery cabaret slope towards the end. The announcement that they were going to finish with John Coltrane's Giant Steps raised a few eyebrows, but Coltrane's spirit was conspicuously absent from the version that followed. Originally intended as the ultimate, crowning achievement of the bop era, Giant Steps is the Stairway to Heaven of jazz. If you're going to cover it, you had better make damn sure you have got something new to say about it. Unfortunately, Manship clearly didn't.
