When you hear Alan Skidmore's tribute show to John Coltrane, you can't quite close your eyes and believe the late jazz saxophonist has come back to life. But you do believe with all certainty that you are hearing someone deliver a heartfelt homage to something they care about more than almost anything else. Skidmore played what might be one of the swan-song gigs of the much-loved Vortex Club at the weekend (it is scheduled to close in July) with a suitably dramatic Coltranesque quartet featuring Steve Melling on piano, Arnie Somogyi on bass and Paddy O'Flaherty on drums.
Skidmore - one of the most ferociously virtuosic saxophonists to have emerged out of the British sax generation that worked up its momentum around 1970 - is no mere mirror of Coltrane's glory. When he attacks the master's long, twisting odysseys into melodic and harmonic density, he plays as if the effort is fearsome. To watch his chest pumping after a five-minute double-time avalanche of improvisation, you almost wish he would sit down and recover with a bit of Coltrane-like yoga breathing.
But if, among the scores of Coltrane disciples young and old in the world, there are plenty who play longer, faster, louder or with no apparent sign of drawing breath at all, there are few who are able to give as moving a performance as Skidmore. Coltrane made his music for devotional reasons, and in his own more pragmatic way that is exactly what Skidmore is doing too.
The 60-year-old saxophonist's first solo on the mazelike Giant Steps soon became a double-time furore, maintaining a measured awareness of contrast and dynamics beneath. A fine Somogyi bass solo, ending in the sliding chords of the Coltrane quartet's Jimmy Garrison, invited Skidmore back with a fascinatingly ethereal coda - more like the Scotsman Bobby Wellins in the 1960s than the tempestuous guru from Carolina.
The uptempo Impressions brought fine performances from all the band, with Melling lighter and more playful than McCoy Tyner. Skidmore and O'Flaherty engaged in a headlong duet as the others dropped out, and the gig closed with a clamorous break from O'Flaherty. Music made with love.
