The autumn season at the Spin kicked off with a guest soloist who was back in Oxford having played here to very appreciative audiences several times over the past few years. Saxophonist Mark Ramsden approaches his music with a very individual mix of reverence, intensity and lyricism which allows him to breathe new life into old standards without breaking away from the integrity of the original.

This was clear from the first number of the evening, Ellington's Things ain't what they used to be, in which Ramsden eschewed the traditional saxophonist's approach of blasting the tune out as if to emulate a full sax section, in favour of a delicate, flowing interpretation that forced the rest of the band to come down to his level and was really much closer to the spirit of the original. Ramsden has a remarkably fluid and yet forceful style of playing in which exquisite flowing phrases are interspersed with sharp, punched notes or sudden flights up to the very top range of the instrument. His playing of Jobim's classic Estate was particularly fine and perfectly matched the information he gave that the tune is subtitled "mourning the end of summertime". There was a sad, heartfelt quality about his phrasing of the melody and in the subsequent soloing. The same was true of his playing of Lover Man, a tune equally fitted to his style. On the other hand, he can also turn up the temperature and pull out the bluesy bebop licks when required as in Mingus's Nostaglia in Times Square.

The house band - Pete Oxley on guitar, Mark Doffman on drums and Luke Street depping on bass - were as sharp and professional as ever. Oxley soloed with his usual style and vigour particularly in his own bluesy tune, Deeper in Debt, while Doffman gave us a firm demonstration of how to set up a web of cross rhythms in an extended drum introduction - at Mark Ramsden's insistence - to Caravan, another Ellington classic steeped in the flavour of the east. Altogether this was an auspicious start to a new season of gigs at the Spin.