Chip Wickham brings Ronnie Scott’s to its feet with spiritual jazz set

Standing ovations are relatively rare at Ronnie Scott’s, but Chip Wickham and his band received one on this occasion for their distinctive brand of “spiritual jazz”, a sub-genre whose godfather is the late Pharoah Sanders. Wickham acknowledged his debt to the recently-deceased saxophone maestro by playing a version of the latter’s ‘Astral Traveling’.

The idea of spiritual jazz is to ease everyone – musicians and audience alike – into a zone of blissed-out mystical contemplation. It doesn’t do to over-analyse it – it’s really just a form of minimalism. The tunes don’t have beginnings or endings, they just start, and carry on until they stop. The moment you begin to think about structure, the spell is broken.

So for musicians used to hitting chord changes, it’s more challenging to play than you might think. Simon ‘Sneaky’ Houghton, for example, was required to stick to a simple bass riff throughout each tune. Long diatonic passages tend to restrict the choices available to soloists, unless they choose to step outside the key. But such avant-garde practices are not Chip’s style: he keeps it cool and mellow.

The set consisted largely of selections from his new album Cloud 10, the leader switching between tenor saxophone and flute. ‘Winter’ was so slow and languorous that it could just as easily be called ‘Midsummer’. We were also treated to a new tune titled ‘Space Walk’, which George Cooper began with suitably Star Trekkie synth effects, joined by percussionist Sam Bell on (appropriately enough) his tinkling bell tree. He and vibes man Jonny Mansfield were rather under-used, I felt, Wickham preferring to give himself lengthy solos on every tune. The final number of the night was ‘Tubby Chaser’, another selection from the new album. A tribute to the UK’s bebop master Tubby Hayes, it featured Mansfield’s vibes and the first drum solo of the night from Joost Hendrickx.