Apparently some people will do anything they can to stay at home watching football on the TV, even if it means enduring moments like English soccer pundit Mark Lawrenson horribly abusing the work of the great Nick Lowe – “Well John, look at Beckham, he doesn’t know if it’s New York or New Year”. Ouch! I’m the opposite. I’ll do anything to avoid it – even if it means eating Pizza, on this occasion an ‘American hot’, which I don’t think came from America, and which certainly wasn’t very hot. But the music, the real temptation that saw us walking the soccer-fan saturated streets of Soho, was (on second thoughts if you do have to watch international soccer on television, then go to Soho’s Bar Italia to see the Azzurri –it doesn’t get any hotter).

Sheppard is widely regarded as one of the most celebrated British saxophonists and composer (‘though Serge, I note that he chose to hone his skills in your wonderful Paris) with an unrivalled pedigree of both solo work and collaborations with artistes such as Gil Evans and Carla Bley – actually if you bother to look at his biography you’ll see that the list is almost endless. I saw in some of the pieces I read preparing for this that some critics deem him too easy, too accessible, not sufficiently complex to deserve real jazz credibility. Well I say, “why make things too difficult if they don’t need to be”. Sheppard’s playing is melodic and tuneful (so he prefers his major keys to his minors), deeply soulful, wonderfully structured, not without wit, and certainly complex and challenging enough for his audience tonight.

'P.S.' Andy Sheppard and John Parricelli

The two began with three pieces from the 2003 album PS – the first two, ‘Reveries’ and ‘Glencarron’ (which if it isn’t a cheap own label malt whisky, certainly should be) were quite folk like, with Parricelli on acoustic guitar (though being helped out by a few of his numerous pedals and boxes). The third, ‘Les Mains d’Alice’ brought on the electric guitar which Parricelli played for the rest of the evening, and a thrilling chorus effect that he frequently used during the set. With the rest of the band back from the boozer – Dudley Phillips on bass and Nic France on drums – (both longstanding collaborators with Sheppard and veterans of the London jazz scene, who can be found playing on Phillip’s thought-provokingly titled album, Life Without Trousers) they run into the first of a number of standards (I couldn’t help thinking they all sounded a bit like ‘Luck be my lady’, but to be honest I’m not as up on my jazz as I should be).

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