Zhenya Strigalev elevates closed eyes to the ceiling, and cups his alto sax in a prayer-like pose – like a supplicant pleading with the spirits of spontaneous performance. The young Russian contemporary-jazz hotshot (a Royal Academy of Music graduate after a prize-winning head-start in his homeland) is the kind of high-wire chancer for whom divine intervention might be a handy fallback: he hurls himself into jazz-making without fear of the drop below. He has been launching his new CD, Smiling Organizm, at Charlie Wright's, with a skilful, if somewhat under-organised international band. It features Britons Liam Noble and Steve Fishwick (piano and trumpet), and Americans Michael Janisch and Tim Lefebvre (acoustic and electric basses) and Miami-raised drummer Obed Calvaire.
Strigalev's album includes: brooding Russian dirges, flat-out 1960s-style hard bop with contemporary New York hip-hop twists (his uptempo playing often recalls giants of the genre such as Jackie McLean or Art Pepper), free improv, heartfelt ballads and plenty more. The group's opening piece on Thursday typified that chemistry with a deceptively mellow, mid-tempo sax-and-trumpet harmony over a steadily building hip-hop groove. Strigalev accelerated from purring long sounds to fiercely seamless squalls, powered by Lefebvre's bubbling bass guitar. Noble hammered a vivid chordal solo to keep up the heat, and Fishwick improvised with typical shapeliness, though he was somewhat swamped by the melee. A more orthodox jazz feel followed, with Michael Janisch's emphatic walk now furnishing the bassline. Noble's solo combined his characteristically shrewd phrasing with a dissonant, Thelonious Monkish clang. Strigalev's fast Yaspin was a virtuoso bebop display, but though Calvaire's snare-drum snaps urged both his sax and Noble's improvisations on, the breakneck duck-and-weave theme taxed the sidemen.
The engaging Strigalev has an infectious enthusiasm for the heat of the moment, but his sometimes byzantine compositions impose tough formal demands. With a band like this, though, practice will almost certainly make perfect enough.
