Dave O'Higgings and his biggish band have just finished a tour of the UK, finally finishing at his hometown of
Derby. Over the past 17 gigs he has played in places such as the
London Jazz Cafe in
Camden and The Manchester Royal Northen College of music.
I saw him this year on the 12th of December at the Assembly Rooms Darwin sweet. He was playing with his biggish band, which included Dave O'Higgings on Alto, Tennor, and Sop saxophones (tennor being his main sax, a lovely beat up old Selmer Mark 6), Mike Outram on Guitar (although i didnt get
a good look at it, it was a Gibson, and it might of been an ES model),
Pete Eckford on percussion, Alex Garnet on Bari sax and flute (what a guy this man got some fantastic sounds out of his bari) Winston Clifford (an excellent drummer this guy knows what hes doing), Sam Burgess on double bass
Martin Shaw on Trumpet and Flugal, Jim Watson on piano, Mark Nightingale on Trombone and finally Oren Marshall on Tuba (yes i said tuba, at the end of the gig this guy did a massive solo where he did circular breathing for
about 10 minutes!)
The band played a number of tunes of there new album (big shake up) but also they played a few tunes from Dave's last album entilted "The Grinders Monkey" They played the tune of the same name. The emotion that went into this whole night was quite astonoshing, Dave was just contantly moving around
and giving massive grins to a player who was trying to play a better solo then the
the other. And thats what they were trying to do for most of the night, out do each other, playing faster more impossible licks untill one of them would have to take a breath.
The arrangments he played as well were all mostly comtempary, with a hint
of New Orleans Jazz in there, things that stuck out in my mind were the time changes in it, most of the time in a song he would be jumping about from 4/4 into 3/4 and
then into 2/4 then back to 3/4 which gave the whole feeling of never quite in time for the piece. Overall an extremely good band, to any UK noders i advise you to see
this man and his band.