Sonny Simmons
Vortex, London
04/05/2010
Sonny Simmons - Alto saxophone, cor anglais
Derek Saw - Trumpet, trombone
John Jasnoch - Guitar, oud
Charlie Collins - Drums

Sonny Simmons has some serious pedigree that dates back to an early recording session with Eric Dolphy and continues through the series of ESP Disk recordings with which he established his reputation in the mid ?60s. He hasn’t let up since, as the sessionography on his website (sonnysimmons.org) attests. For all that he has a relatively low profile, and I’d guess that that’s because he has uncompromisingly followed a path that paralleled many of the key movements in post-bebop jazz, selectively absorbing elements of some (Albert Ayler, John Coltrane) while remaining true to his own peculiarly refined take on the tradition. The Eastern spirituality that was central to much African American jazz in the late 60s is clearly still important to him, and as the blurb on that website attests, for Sonny ?It’s a vocation, not a musical style’.

Each of the two sets at the Vortex followed what must be a standard format for this group, which is Simmons’ regular vehicle when he’s on this side of the Atlantic. The evening began with a number in Far Eastern mode, Bowing to the East, which featured John Jasnoch on oud and Sonny Simmons, primarily an alto saxophonist, on cor anglais. The body of the set that followed and all bar the coda to the second were by far the lengthiest pieces, and both fused bebop and ?new wave’ with more than a hint of free Jazz, particularly in the drumming of Charlie Collins. The group closed each set with a ballad feature for the leader. “If there was a lady of about 80 in the house she would recognise it”, Simmons said of the first. Well I’m a man of about 40, and I’m afraid I didn’t, though even I couldn’t fail to identify the last number of the night as Thelonious Monk’s Around Midnight.

In those two long movements Simmons was fully absorbed into the collective identity of the band. Derek Saw alternated between trumpet and trombone as the music’s flux dictated, initially offering a rapid trumpet commentary on Simmons’ more mellifluous lines, and then on trombone, engaging in a much choppier exchange with Jasnoch’s guitar. Collins’ mood was incessantly active, and whenever Simmons took five the pace became more urgent. Both of these pieces came across as a potentially unending sequence of trade-offs, interventions and shifting alliances. If there was any compositional logic involved I didn’t hear it. This had its advantages, keeping the audience on their toes, but there were inevitable occasional lows. A forceful drum solo that began the second set, for example, carried into an uncomfortable duet with Saw’s muted trumpet, his thin, almost reedy tone buffeted by waves of percussion. Jasnoch joining on guitar and Saw switching to trombone bought unexpected echoes of Broadway to the general air of post-bop abstraction, and hooked us back in.

Perhaps the highlights of the set were Simmons’ ballad features. For the first his alto tone was clean and strong as he bent notes for an achingly melancholic effect. On Round Midnight his vocalisation was bruised but clear-headed and unsentimental, and he gave perhaps the least clichéd take on the old standard I’ve yet heard.

Simmons is an imposing figure of a man, but a bit of a luvvy too, eventually sending us on our way with a “kiss kiss”. I have read of his music being described somewhere as ?avant classicism’ and that just about nails it. There’s nothing particularly original about his take on any of the modes he explores with this quartet, but you can sense the years of experience that he carries so lightly and its a pure pleasure to listen to it flow through his horn. A lifetime of immersion in the music has granted him both depth of feeling and a manifest authority that many more bullish performers can’t match.

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