Splash Point Jazz Club

Close my eyes and I could have been in Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. But then I would have missed the wide-ranging musicality and powerful physicality that is the wizardry of tenor sax Brandon Allen. This is the performer who Jazzwise Magazine acclaimed, ‘Arguably the most exciting tenor player in Britain today.’

And there he was, 70 or so miles south of London, guesting at Neal Richardson’s monthly Splash Point Jazz Club session at The View, Seaford Golf Club. And we loved him. What’s more, we loved an evening that also featured the Eastbourne club’s hugely talented Andy Panayi on soprano sax, Sue Richardson who combined quiet vocals and belting trumpet interchangeably, Neal (vocals and piano), Nigel Thomas (double bass) and Paul Cavaciuti (drums).

If jazz is a combination of blues, syncopation, swing and creative freedom, then these six people added another element: joy, both in the way they clearly got a tremendous kick out of jamming together and how the audience rapturously appreciated their performances. Brandon and Andy duetting was a harmonic treat.

But back to Neal for a moment. This man not only creates much of his own material – I particularly liked his warm nod to Victoria Wood in the very funny Can’t Get Down and Dirty Tonight – he makes the piano keys dance, and sings and is a comedian. A brief return to Ronnie Scott’s here, because he has something of that club’s MC with a line of patter that evoked Ronnie’s cheeky impertinence. Inventive humour ran through the evening, with Neal for instance playing a G while introducing No More Blues, to evoke the minuscule bikinis on hedonistic Copacabana beach. A hot night got even hotter.

The result was a party atmosphere where guests were linked by their love of jazz, a fiesta where the guest of honour superseded his build up. For Brandon, who has performed with Eric Clapton and featured on film soundtracks including Alfie and The Look of Love, lived up to Jazz Journal’s description of him as: ‘Muscular and robust one moment, warm and soothing another, stretching out with an abrasive edge.’ His four-octave range appeared effortless and fun as he tiptoed into the highest notes. He and his tenor sax were one as his head dipped and left knee bent towards the right when caught in the emotion of the music. Then his torso and neck straightened like a strongman about to lift a man mountain as the tempo and volume increased. Magic to watch and magic to hear as his sax produced rippling notes that rolled into waves of energy that could have powered Seaford – but when did he breathe?

On double bass Nigel extracted emotion with every pluck of his strings, his strong fingers achieving a fine range of emotive sound, while Paul caressed his percussion instruments with tenderness, before bringing out the big guns, each quietly supporting Brandon before delivering their own solo spots with ingenuity.

For an encore we were treated to a riotous 12-bar blues including Sue muting her trumpet with a red-andwhite sink plunger. Well, it was that sort of night.

Splash Point Jazz plays at The View on the second Wednesday of each month, so look forward to tenor sax Jane Tuff on 14th September. Andrea Hargreaves