Kyle Eastwood brings cinematic sounds to Ronnie Scott’s

Say ‘Eastwood’, and in your mind’s eye a square jawed horseman appears, framed against the sky, eyes narrowed, teeth clamped around a cigarillo. But that rugged image really doesn’t apply to Clint’s bass-playing son Kyle, who conveys a sleek, cosmopolitan air.

Long domiciled in Paris, Eastwood works with a London-based band, a quintet that has remained largely unchanged over recent years: Andrew McCormack (piano), Quentin Collins (trumpet/flugelhorn), Brandon Allen (tenor/soprano saxophone) and Chris Higginbottom (drums) have all been with him for the last two albums, and longer in most cases, McCormack’s involvement dating as far back as 2006’s Now. It’s no surprise, then, that as a unit they groove meticulously.

Most of this slick, professional show was devoted to tunes from Eastwood’s most recent release Cinematic – as its title suggests, a collection of film themes. Having scored several of his father’s films, Eastwood knows what he is doing with this material. The super-cool funky bass groove in Lalo Schifren’s Bullitt prompted a lengthy solo from the band’s leader on his cut-down David Gage bass. Adele’s theme for Skyfall was perhaps the best of the bunch. Rendered upswing in this version, the tune featured McCormack in a real burner of a solo. Higginbottom was a whirling dervish behind the drums, while Allen contributed a fine wigged-out tenor solo.

Bernard Hermann’s theme for the noir masterpiece Taxi Driver began and ended with terrifying bursts of accelerando drums, while in the middle Allen played the doomed love ballad on soprano, as the stage was bathed in appropriately blood-red light. They concluded with a strangely unsettling version of Henry Mancini’s Pink Panther theme in 7/8. Unsettling, because although it was fine for the blowing section, skipping half a beat with such a familiar melody sounded a tad weird. No matter – this was an enjoyable evening in the company of consummate musicians.