Review - 18 October 1999 - by Kenny Mathieson

Bobby Wellins Quartet
at The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen
The Aberdeen Alternative Festival offered the Glasgow-born saxophonist Bobby Wellins an all too rare opportunity to bring his own London-based quartet north of the border. The results were fascinatingly different from the last time I heard him play in Scotland, with the Brian Kellock Trio in Glasgow, and underlined the essential differences between a pick-up rhythm section (however good) and a regular line-up.

Spurred on by Liam Noble's extrovert pianism and a resourceful rhythm section of bassist Simon Thorpe and drummer Dave Wiggins, Wellins was prepared to take the kind of audacious harmonic risks seldom negotiated in Glasgow. While strongly rooted in bop, his playing has always avoided the predictable in any case, but in this setting he pushed his harmonic explorations into even more unexpected twists and turns. Even at extremes, though, Wellins never lost touch with the core melodic material of the tune, and constructed his solos from phrase to phrase with a lucid, highly organic feel, employing a clean, sharp-edged articulation and a richly expressive tone on tenor saxophone.

They chose a mixed programme of Wellins' own tunes (including his Glasgow-inflected tribute to trumpeter Clifford Brown, CUCB), jazz compositions and standards, most of which segued neatly into the next with no break. The standards were approached in deconstructionist rather than reverent mode, as was what seemed to be an extended fantasia on tunes by or associated with Thelonious Monk in the first half.

Noble's angular, percussive pianism might not be every saxophonist's ideal accompaniment, but Wellins did much of his greatest work with the grand-master of such an approach, Stan Tracey, and responded to Noble's promptings with relish and invention. The pianist's own solos mixed stacatto locked-hand chording, scampering runs, cheeky punctuations and incongruous quotations in highly effective fashion.

(c) Kenny Mathieson (written for the Scotsman newspaper).