Joe Henderson

Joe Henderson, Cultural Centre Concert Hall, March 5 Joe Henderson is one of the world's greatest living saxophone players and he seems to improve with each passing year.

He also appears, with his tribute albums, to have hit a popular seam which he is mining assiduously.

His tributes to Billy Strayhorn and Miles Davis both picked up Grammy awards and he is now touring with the material from Double Rainbow, an album dedicated to the great Brazilian bossa nova composer Antonio Carlos Jobim.

The first set was devoted entirely to Jobim and without the ministrations of whoever was manning the sound desk it would probably have been fine. As it was the delicate task of making four acoustic instruments a little louder in a superbly acoustically-engineered concert hall was entrusted to somebody who had clearly devoted his working life to making squeaky voiced Canto-pop singers sound good in concrete barns.

Henderson was all but buried in the mix and the drums were processed rock-style so that every time Paulo Braga hit the snare it sounded like the ricochet from a pile-driver.

Under the circumstances the musicians performed miraculously with fine swinging renditions of Jobim bossas, mostly eschewing the better known standards.