Edinburgh Blues and Jazz Festival review: Kyle Eastwood Band, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

HE MAY have a famous dad, but Kyle Eastwood has decidedly established his own credentials as a jazz bassist and bandleader, as demonstrated by this Edinburgh Jazz Festival appearance, whether bow-beating a djembe-like rhythm on double bass before bringing in a sonorously rich melody in Marrakesh, cutting loose with five-string bass guitar in the insistent bass ‘n’ brass hook of Tonic or in starkly eloquent duet with Andrew McCormack’s piano in the theme he wrote for father Clint’s film Letters from Iwo Jima.

His is an expansive and expressive quintet, too, with pianist McCormack, saxophonist Graeme Blevins, trumpeter Graham Flowers and drummer Martyn Kaine introducing themselves individually in no uncertain terms in the opening Marciac, and Blevins and Flowers sustaining some powerful and creative blowing throughout.

In contrast, Martin Taylor’s first half was a mellow affair, the guitarist looking indecently at ease, his playing unhurried yet managing to sound at times like a trio of lead, rhythm and bass, in which a tune might amble off in some amiably eccentric excursion of its own. Repertoire included a sinuously bluesy take on an old Hoagy Carmichael tune, the by now mandatory West Indian cascade of Down at Cocomo’s, and a lovely extract from a suite commemorating Django Reindhardt that he and trumpeter Guy Barker are due to perform with strings at the Proms.

He exhorted us to imagine an accompanying orchestra but ... really, it worked very nicely as a solo piece, thank you.

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