When Alexander Hawkins turned up at an improvisation session in Oxford a few years ago he already had a fierce technique and a sharply perceptive ear. Now with a burgeoning international reputation as a highly innovative pianist and free improviser Hawkins has combined a remarkable awareness of style and harmony to this technical virtuosity. This makes him a jazz musician of considerable stature. It was also very special that he was joined at the Spin Jazz club by trumpeter Nick Malcolm (pictured), who played at the Oxford Jazz Festival last year and also, like Hawkins, has a mounting reputation on the jazz and free improvisation scene. As these two have played together several times recently there was no doubt that combining with the Spin trio would trigger music of exceptional quality.

By the second tune, Booker Ervine’s Aggression, Hawkins and Malcolm in duet showed how a jazz standard can be stretched and reformulated with the piano hacking the rhythm into new dimensions and turning the harmonies into rich dissonant clusters while the trumpet strung together phrases that twisted the known into new angles. In What Is This Thing Called Love? Malcolm chopped an old tune into a whole new set of phrases and this time the two guest musicians set up duets, Nick with Raf Mizraki on bass and Hawkins with Mark Doffman on drums, which again allowed them to show great musical wizardry. Alongside his challenging phrasings, Malcolm has phenomenal tonal control, moving from a husky blurred sound through to beautifully clear notes. Hawkins — who can double time almost anything, though this might lose some audiences — plays with an intellectualism that leads to music that is superficially sacrilegious but cunningly satisfying. At the same time he is not above turning back the pages and appreciating the historical pillars of jazz.

This was another evening at the Spin when we should be very grateful Oxford has a club prepared to give space to both the mainstream and also younger players who are not afraid to take a tune by the scruff of the neck and shake it into something new.