Bevan Quartet Moves On To Birmingham After Blistering Vortex Show

The saxophonist, best known for his work with free jazz legend Sunny Murray, is currently on tour pulling together the powerful quartet of highly-rated US free form guitarist Joe Morris, Necks drummer Tony Buck and fast rising acoustic bassist Dominic Lash.

Last night the tour reached the Vortex in London and Bevan by just a few minutes in on the opening half hour improvisation had reached boiling point with a high-octane energy on his tenor saxophone that set his stall out right from the start.

When the first improv ended, the audience seemed to collect itself with a little quiet chatter, allowing the quartet to mimic the new sonic in the club with a differing dynamic full of skittering guitar lines from Morris, as home as he is playing free, he told me during the break, as he is teaching the tenets of free jazz to his students at the New England Conservatory.

The second set featured shorter pieces sometimes with a slanted swing from Buck who switched from the longer rhythm patterns that seemed to vault over bar lines in the opening half. Bevan on the monstrous rarely heard bass saxophone dug more into late-Coltrane territory as the set wore on and achieved a yelping, primal space when he adopted curved soprano for some truly harrowing sections, while Lash scampered around the bass opening up a clear improvising path for the others. Morris was the magnet for the other three in the second set, at times Bern Nix-like, and often finding a cluster of notes that brought a momentous clarity to the group’s collective sound.

- Stephen Graham

The tour continues tonight at the Hare and Hounds in Birmingham and moves to The Cube, Bristol tomorrow; The Folly Bridge, Oxford (on Saturday), and The Rising Sun, Reading (Sunday 1 November).