Peter Bacon reports:

Stan Sulzmann (Photo: Nick Smart)

British saxophonist Stan Sulzmann – surely one of the most admired and certainly one of the most loved jazz musicians in the UK – has a new album coming out in December and is launching it at the 606 Club next week. It features the quartet he first formed for a 2013 EFG London Jazz Festival gig, broadcast by the BBC.

Not yet a subscriber of our Wednesday Breakfast Headlines?
Join the mailing list for a weekly roundup of Jazz News.

With Stan on tenor are Nick Smart on trumpet and flugel horn, Ross Stanley on Hammond organ and Tim Giles on drums. They played a mix of re-worked standards and original tunes back then but focus on the leader’s writing on the album, which is called Shadow Painting. That title is a pretty good description of the magic that Sulzmann works with his horn – he is a master of not stating the obvious but at getting to the intriguing, sometimes darker, interior aspects of the music, and the effects it leaves behind it.

Tracks on Shadow Painting include A Pat On The Back, a sly reference to a Louis Armstrong comment on Desert Island Discs back in 1968; Free Coffee, which takes its name from those bits of cardboard we mean to get stamped but always lose before we achieve the full card; Lake Song, for the club Zeffirellis in Ambleside; and the title track which is inspired by a quote from David Hockney.

It’s a fine all-star band that Sulzmann has convened, and the album launch at the 606 should be a real treat.

The Stan Sulzmann Organ Quartet’s Shadow Painting is released on Jellymould on 2 December. The album launch at the 606 is on Thursday 31 October.

LINK: Details and booking for the album launch