A cock-up on the transport front almost reduces British jazz veteran Alan Skidmore to tears this evening, as the saxophonist arrives to play the penultimate date of a "dream come true" British tour that has teamed him with South African percussion virtuosos Amampondo.
The bone-crunching grooves conjured by the scantily clad rhythm warriors would certainly have shaken the foundations of this cosy jazz venue; but tragedy has struck, and the mighty Amampondo find themselves stranded in Brighton, victims of that most prosaic of English musical disasters - a broken Transit van. Skidmore and his faithful quartet look heartbroken to have arrived in Leeds without their prized entourage; even so, it rapidly becomes clear that this razor-honed outfit is perfectly capable of raising quite a few goosebumps on their own.
After three decades of liaisons with such legends as Herbie Hancock and Georgie Fame, Skidmore only really needs his smouldering saxophone to get us all drooling. As usual, he massages and then assaults our ears with the kind of heady, devotional jazz that leaves even the non-smokers in the audience gagging for a cigarette.
His set comprises music written by John Coltrane, and the band is obviously at home evoking his slow-burning dreamscapes and his fiery crescendos. As they strike up, with Resolution, you would swear that Elvin Jones, Jimmy Garrison and McCoy Tyner were in the room too, so authentic are those swelling sheets of sound.
The quartet gives an intense reading of Spiritual, and Skidmore spends the time between his exalted solos sitting stage right, crabbily rolling cigarettes and gradually allowing his grief to melt away into the band's gathering maelstrom. His sweating cohorts display the sort of bionic musicianship that would make your average instrumentalist want to pack it all in and pursue something with less fearsome competition.
In the more blazing passages of Wise One, pianist Steve Melling delivers a devastating barrage of chords, Arnie Somogyi's supple bass thrusts and heaves, and Steven Keogh belies his own blank-faced stare with a display of Olympian skin-bashing.
Tonight Skidmore should take comfort from the fact that his band have whipped up a stirringly soulful musical feast in the face of disaster. And, you know, looking at the Wardrobe's tiny stage, it's hard to figure out where Amampondo would have sat if they had made it to Leeds. In the audience perhaps? The noise would have been more than terrifying.
At the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1 (020-7960 4242), on Monday .
