Jim Faulkner Quartet featuring Steve Berry

I made it down to the Sand Bar last night to catch the 'Jim Faulkner Quartet featuring Steve Berry' at one of the Sand Bar Jazz evenings. It was good catch Jim properly for the first time in some ways, as I've only actually seen him play twice before, both at the Manchester Jazz Festival with Mrs Columbo. Last year's said gig was a little tentative, but last night's was a much stronger performance.

There were more well worn standards than I was expecting, but they were delivered with enough force and freshness to give the tunes life. Steve Berry was ace on the double bass as expected. Ed Kainyek on sax was more upbeat than he can sometimes be, and Rob Turner on drums responded to the energy levels well. Jim goes for quite a classic forties/fifties'ish clean guitar sound (tonight at least), and is great at interspersing his lines with chord fragment comps that sound quite Joe Pass inspired. There's not much in the way of milking the single notes with string bending or overdrive, but that's all fine with me. Probably the best performance came on the self-penned 'Stuck in a Lift', with Jim really kicking in and pushing the solo's momentum sweetly. He didn't exactly sell the tune to us, describing it as 'MOR' if I recall, but it had far more grace and power than that.