Martin Speake, the diffident, serious British alto saxophonist, favours the oblique, the patient and the unspectacular. He is an unlikely figure to be a constant source of surprises. And yet he has taken part in all manner of unexpected projects over the past decade, and been a remarkably powerful creative force on the UK jazz scene.
He has played duets with American cool-sax phenomenon Jimmy Giuffre, toured with an A-list Euro-American quartet including former Keith Jarrett drum star Paul Motian, and he has an intelligent, elegantly varied new CD out with a Canadian rhythm section and the fine UK pianist Nikki Iles.
At the Vortex this week, Speake investigated another species of contemporary musical life. The Unison Quartet (a makeover of his old Fever Pitch ensemble) features the saxophonist with three high-class partners: Oren Marshall on tuba, guitarist Mike Outram and drummer Asaf Sirkis. The group specialise in a long-limbed, serpentine exploration of melodic ideas extensively drawn from the Middle East and India.
What could be a dip into fashionable world-jazz exotica is, for Speake, a perfectly logical diversion. He has always been interested in the Lee Konitz/Lennie Tristano 1950s New York cool style - a predominantly legato approach with devious extended melodies - and was likely to pick up on similar approaches to song construction from other parts of the planet.
The Vortex was sparsely attended for this show, but it didn't hamper the Unison Quartet's focus or enthusiasm, and the music was often mesmerising. On a composition drawn from south-Indian vocal sources, the band divided the theme into fragments of changing lengths, and swapped them back and forth.
Marshall held the room fascinated by his range of effects as a solo improviser, bringing a mix of multiphonics and ghostly sounds to Speake's Beautiful Nightmare. He could also take on a Dirty Dozen Brass Band funkiness playing behind Speake's whirling variations.
Outram, one of the British guitar finds of recent years, played several solos of fluidity and purpose, sometimes with a plummy, organ-like sound. On drums, Sirkis confirmed the stature he has established with Gilad Atzmon, with sonorous, Elvin Jones-like solo flights on mallets, and taut, sharp-eared ensemble playing. Four virtuosos on a unique path.
