Dave O'Higgins - It's Always 9.30 in Zog

The Guardian 60

(JVG)

The expert British post-bop saxophonist Dave O’Higgins has toured with stars from Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles to Cleo Laine, is an eloquent interpreter of Dave Brubeck classics in pianist Darius Brubeck’s quartet and has led a raft of his own album sessions down the years – but with eight originals on the album, this is perhaps his most personal venture, aided by long-term partners Graham Harvey on keys, Geoff Gascoyne on bass and Sebastiaan de Krom on drums. The title track, with its sly and sidelong cool-bop theme and walking bassline, could have come straight off a 1960s Blue Note session, as could O’Higgins’ masterful tenor solo of hard-accented runs and warbling blues wails. His tenor sound is forceful on the Art Blakey-like Nothing to Lose and his soprano playfully graceful on One for Big G. But the four covers are the standouts, with O’Higgins’ sense of improv form at its most secure on Chico Chagas’s film-noiresque Brixton, the late Bheki Mseleku’s staccato Timelessness, and a patiently lyrical, blues-infused Easy Living.