Folk, Jazz, etc: Brass neck pays off as bold quartet shuns rhythm section and finds anarchic but fun niche

LOOK Mum, no drums… and no piano or bass for that matter. Yet as a quartet of three saxes plus trumpet, Brass Jaw's idiosyncratic approach to jazz lacks for nothing in the way of drive, rhythm or sheer muscle, as their debut CD, Deal With It, suggests.

Next week's release comes at the end of an eventful year for the "a cappella horns" quartet, which combines the playing, arranging and composing talents of four well-established names on the Scottish jazz scene – baritone saxist Allon Beauvoisin, Konrad Wiszniewski on tenor sax and Paul Towndrow on alto, plus award-winning trumpeter Ryan Quigley. The past few months have seen a hectic touring schedule include an enthusiastically received seven-date run at the London Jazz Festival in November, while last month saw the quartet premiere two chamber jazz works commissioned from English saxophone maestro John Surman for the British Composer Awards in London, an event broadcast live by Radio 3.

And earlier in the year they were chosen to represent British jazz at the Jazzahead summit at Bremen, Germany.

"The highlight was the London jazz festival," says Beauvoisin, who takes many of the composing and arranging credits on the new album, "partly because we did lots of venues, from small, intimate gigs to festival halls. It was great fun, although a lot of work."

The balance between serious music-making and fun is something the quartet maintains with alacrity. Being labelled "chamber jazz", with its slightly po-faced overtones, doesn't prevent them performing with terrific zest – not to mention a certain anarchy, which has given rise to scandalous tales of Wiszniewski's feet being gaffer-taped to the stage during one particularly demanding solo, or Quigley finding himself chained to his music stand.

All four have known each other since their days in youth jazz ensembles, explains Beauvoisin, now 45, "so we've got that camaraderie. Especially as we have such a weird line-up, if we come over as totally stuffy and serious, it'll put up a barrier that needn't be there. So we try and steer away from that".

There's certainly nothing chamber-ish about Deal With It, from its peppy opening title track to the hilariously foot-in-mouth collapse of the closing Falling In Love All Over Again (they play it properly elsewhere on the album).

Whether in the raucous post-bop high jinks of Horace Silver's Seor Blues, a snappy interpretation of that hoary old standard It Ain't Necessarily So, or the mysterious and melancholy drift of Holding Pattern, the album resonates with creative energy.

Playing without a rhythm section is nothing new to Beauvoisin, a former member of the Hung Drawn saxophone quartet and a man who credits hearing the renowned 29th Street Saxophone Quartet from the United States as inspiring him to take up baritone as a youngster. However, it does present challenges: "Everyone has to have a good international time flow – there's no drummer giving you the subdivisions – and the team aspect comes much more to the fore."

Trumpeter Quigley joined what was originally an all-reeds quartet after saxophonist Martin Kershaw dropped out to pursue his ambitious Hero As A Riddle project. Beauvoisin says, laughing: "Ryan had always been taking the mickey, saying, 'You're a group called Brass Jaw with no brass in it'.

"So we gave it a try and right from the first rehearsal we realised we'd got something. It was one of those accidental moments of genius."

Careful forward planning enables the four players to fulfil their Brass Jaw engagements, as well as their own projects. For his part, Beauvoisin will be touring with colleague Ryan Quigley's Big Band in March, although he admits: "To be honest, Brass Jaw is taking over my life."

• Deal With It is released on 18 January on Keywork Records. For further information, see www.brassjaw.co.uk