Sunday night @ the Globe: Jeffrey Hewer Quartet - June 8

© Sheila Herrick

Jeffrey Hewer (guitar); Eliot Richards (tenor sax); Sam Jackson (bass); John Arnesen (drums)

Jazz-wise this was a cracking gig. Audience-wise less so. If a band of this calibre can't pull the punters what hope is there for the rest? True there was competition up the road from a 'jar on the bar' gig but even so surely a city the size of Newcastle could fill two relatively small venues.

It has been suggested that the 'J word' is off-putting and there may be an element of truth in that - jazz has so many different formats it can confuse the layman. However, the Sunday night sessions at the Globe have long been established as a centre for straight-ahead jazz with the occasional offshoot into new directions that I would have thought a core audience would have formed. Or maybe I'm looking for a world that no longer exists.

Getting down (eventually) to the music we heard some hard blowing tenor from Richards, intricate guitar runs from Hewer - how does he make it look so easy? - solid, often quite lyrical, solos from Jackson and punchy drumming from Arnesen.

This was the first time I'd heard Arnesen with the band and the seeming confusion at the end of some numbers suggested that he was relatively new to the line-up. Nevertheless, in the heat of battle he kept his cool driving the soloists to acts of great musical derring-do. His crisp brushwork was as powerful as some lesser mortals' dickery with the hickory.

It was hard-bop all the way apart from choice ballads such as: You Don't Know What Love is; My Ideal and Cole Porter's Everything I Love. All featured Richards' big fat sound although I did wonder if My Ideal wouldn't have benefitted if it had been played in a lower key?

The bop and beyond numbers were: Woody 'n' You; Recorda Me; The Song is You; Jitterbug Waltz; Westfield Blues; Airegin; Au Privave. Despite the sparsity of bums on seats it was an enjoyable evening and no problems with the sound system! Lance