Power Cats Organ Trio @ The Cluny. Tuesday July 17.

Gilad Atzmon (alto saxophone & clarinet), Ross Stanley (Hammond organ) & Asaf Sirkis (drums)

Gilad Atzmon has visited Newcastle several times over the years, latterly with the Orient House Ensemble. Middle Eastern musical influences have preoccupied the exiled Israeli for quite some time… until now. Atzmon has recruited the dynamic Hammond virtuoso Ross Stanley to work alongside long time drummer Asaf Sirkis

in a blues drenched bop trio. Standards flowed, one after another, from Ellington to Bird and beyond. Atzmon’s alto playing was up there with last week’s vsitors to Tyneside Greg Abate and Alan Barnes. Ross Stanley’s smokin’ Hammond and Asaf Sirkis’ forward momentum produced music of the highest level sustained across two sets. The sizeable Jazz North East audience in the Cluny – most of them absent from the Abate/Barnes’ gig at the Corner House some six days earlier – hollered, whistled and cheered after each solo. The applause at the end of the night was of a greater magnitude! The Cluny was a beboppers paradise, so too the Corner House. The fact that two almost entirely different audiences could frequent two venues little more than a mile apart will forever remain a mystery.

Russell