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Trevor Watts at 80, Cafe Oto London
Veteran saxophonist defies the years with a fiery performance
Blowing up a storm: Trevor Watts
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STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
PLAYING his alto and soprano saxophones with a rampant, joyous attack like a contemporary Sidney Bechet, from the very first notes Trevor Watts defies his advancing age.
The 80-year-old, a veteran of revolutionary bands like Spontaneous Music Ensemble and Amalgam from the 1960s and 1970s, rises to a seething ascent as he kicks backwards on reaching each sonic summit.
Veryan Weston’s chiming, intricate piano and the artistry of John Edwards’s bass and the mallets of the subtle, ever-inventive drummer Mark Sanders beat out a thunderous salute to Watts’s eight decades.
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