Bobby Watson, Glasgow Jazz Festival review - 'sax legend ambled on stage, declaring “Go Scotland!”'

Making his first Glasgow appearance for more than a decade and 30 years after his fondly remembered residency at the Glasgow Jazz Festival, alto saxophone hero Bobby Watson cut an immensely amiable, pork-pie-hatted figure as he ambled on to the St Luke’s stage, declaring “Go Scotland!” with a nod to the Euros.

He promptly opened Jackie McLean’s Condition Blue with a perky flourish that intensified into reedy flurries and pedal honks, the tune rolling into a boogie as his first class rhythm section of longstanding double bass collaborator Curtis Lundy, pianist Jordan Williams and drummer Victor Jones swung alongside, the pianist launching into a sparkling excursion while Jones signalled his drum credentials powerfully right from the get go, Watson returning for a lithe reprise.

The saxophonist sustained his blues-inflected, mellow-toned yet authoritative and precisely articulated sound throughout. His blowing as well as his band’s collective muscle were highlighted in a classic from his days with the seminal Jazz Messengers, Wheel Within a Wheel, three of them leaving the stage to their pianist, whose solo prelude ranged deftly from ragtime to rhapsodic before his bandmates returned, Watson retrieving the melody and embellishing it briskly before things slammed to a conclusion.

Elsewhere, Watson sounded an eloquent ballad that was taken up by piano over deeply singing bass, then brought terse attack to his own composition, Karita, and to Lundy’s Elementary My Dear Watson, the rhythm section frequently working up a compelling groove, not least in their short, sharp, bebop rush of an encore.

An opening spot from guitarist Nathan Somevi, accompanied by drummer Kenny Lyons, saw the guitarist deploying his characteristic blend of snappy funk and mellow interludes, reverberating chords interspersed with runs on his hybrid guitar’s bass strings in a warmly delivered and received set.