There was some unforeseen sports event deflecting the attention of many on the evening Julian Nicholas came to the Spin as the guest soloist, so the evening began with a light audience and a good-natured quip from Nicholas that we should "all be watching the football". But it is a mark of the respect felt for this player that the club filled up as the football ended. Last time he came to the Spin, he was part of Pete Oxley's quintet Curious Paradise, and having to deal with some densely scored music that he was playing in public for only the second time. This time there was a chance for him to play music with which he is entirely familiar. The result was proof that Julian is a saxophonist of not only great technical prowess but also delicacy of expression and intensity of feeling.

The evening began with Coltrane's My Shining Hour in which Nicholas stormed straight into a solo of tightly controlled post bebop curves and angles on alto sax that grabbed the attention and showed how much he has to say from the platform of a tune that has become familiar. To make an old tune speak with a new voice and to inject new ideas into a solo are two of the tests of every jazz musician and in both Julian proved himself without hesitation. Moving from alto to soprano, and in the second half to tenor, he showed how, in a wide selection from Coltrane to the well-used Sweet and Lovely through to his own intensely elegant A Thousand Ships, he can be exciting and expressive alongside a faultless technique. Here, the tenor sax playing showed a dynamic range that was sometimes lacking in the alto and soprano.

The house band, which on this occasion included, alongside Pete Oxley, Yaron Stavi on bass and Russ Morgan on drums, worked as they should to provide the firm textured background for a soloist with the expected fine work from Pete Oxley. Also true to form, Yaron Stavi treated us to a couple of explosive and typically individual solos which in one bluegrass-based blues saved a number which was otherwise beginning to flag.