Dave O'Higgins Quartet - Take the Coltrane @ London Jazz Festival, Pizza Express, Soho - Nov. 19

Dave O'Higgins (tenor/soprano sax), Graham Harvey (piano), Geoff Gascoyne (bass), Sebastiaan de Krom (drums).

But Not For Me from the album My Favorite Things from 1960. That's what we like, informative introductions, since I stopped trying to remember titles a long time ago, particularly instrumentals with nothing to hang on to. Mr. Syms from Plays the Blues featuring O'Higgins on soprano. An instrumental version of Dedicated for You  from the album with singer Johnny Hartman and Bessie's Blues from Crescent, referencing A Love Supreme, the previous album in Coltrane's discography.

A more than satisfactory first set and I imagined we may get some 'greatest hits' in set two and wondered what he might do with A Love Supreme. Part Two: Resolution was the answer, kicking things into the stratosphere. Fifth House had him back on soprano, a change from the original and an astrological term for creativity and joy he informed us, and also that it's a contrafact - a reinterpretation - of What is this Thing Called Love?. 

Naima returned things to the greatest hits and kept things magnificent and our little slice of heaven continued through Impressions, though he gave the game away in advance explaining its evolution from Miles' So What.

My choice of encore would have been My Favorite Things, not least because it's long, but second choice was Dear Lord, from Transition, recorded in '65 but unreleased until 1970.

The world has had more than half a century to catch up with John Coltrane, and perhaps never totally will. It's impossible to play a set of another artist - especially one of the giants from yesteryear - and not lose some of the urgency, but this was four fine musicians recreating the music of one of the greatest bands in the history of jazz, and they did it with proficiency, imagination, respect and class. Steve T