In jazz, despite the success of all-women bands such as the Guest Stars in the 1980s, female musicians are still most likely to be vocalists or pianists and unlikely to be taking on the weight of a tenor sax. Yet such women are out there and inevitably, to prove themselves in such a male world, they are often exceptional.

Josephine Davies, the winner of a Perrier award and appearing at the Spin as the guest soloist with the house band, belongs right up there. Playing both tenor and soprano she has a beautiful sense of melody, with an easy grace on the fastest solo passages while also turning on a hard rasping drive when required.

Giving intellectual body to such facility is an enviable feeling for phrasing and musical construction that evades many more hard- hitting muscular saxophonists. This all adds up to a player who, without apparent effort can build a solo of great density, colour and energy. In Coltrane’s Like Sonny and Scofield’s Green Tea, Davies demonstrated how to be both delicate and forceful without becoming either too understated or overpowering. Her own Façade showed an ability to write intricate melody without losing the essential drive that lies at the root of all good jazz.

Davies was most convincing in the up-tempo numbers while her tone on tenor seemed to drop off in a couple of the ballads such as Nancy with the Dancing Eyes.

On bass this week the extraordinary Yaron Stavi, long-standing collaborator with saxophonist Gilad Atzmon, gave a singular lesson in how to build a house-flattening solo (occasionally occluded by some over-loud guitar comping) from the simplest notes to a welter of leaping arpeggios. It is also to Josephine Davies’s credit that she didn’t allow the audience’s response to Yaron’s playing to deflect from her own crafted and canny approach. Look out for her second album due out later this year. n Contrary to the impression I gave in last week’s feature on the Oxford Jazz Festival, Alissa J Robinson is an equal partner with Paul Jefferies and Max Mason in its setting up and organisation. She is also responsible for the well-designed website and publicity.