Now on a transatlantic rite of passage

Julian Siegel, an award-winning young British saxophonist, has reversed the usual trend by hiring two seasoned American sidekicks � and to great musical effect, reports Rob Adams.

Julian Siegel has reversed a trend. In jazz it has long been the practice for visiting saxophonists from the US to tour the UK with local rhythm sections. But the trio that Siegel brings to Scotland next week to open a nine-date British tour features a bass player and drummer from New York - and it's not just any bass player and drummer.

Greg Cohen and Joey Baron have, between them, amassed a wealth of experience that goes back to Cohen's work with saxophone legend Ornette Coleman in the 1960s and includes film soundtracks such as One from the Heart, and sessions with the Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Stan Getz, Carmen McRae and Bill Frisell, to name but a few.

How one of the most respected saxophonists on the London jazz scene and the winner in the best instrumentalist category of the BBC Jazz Awards 2007 came to be working with two of New York's finest is remarkably simple: he offered them a gig and they said yes. How Siegel came to be an award-winning saxophonist - he also won the John Dankworth prize for talent deserving wider recognition in the 2002 British Jazz Awards - is a rather more convoluted story.

Growing up in Nottingham with a jazz-loving father, Siegel fell in love with the tenor saxophone through looking at the pictures on his dad's album collection and hearing all the great tenor players. Eddie Lockjaw Davis and John Coltrane were particular favourites, but before he could try to emulate his role models, there were clarinet lessons. He also took up double-bass, which became his route into the London jazz scene when he moved to the capital in 1991 following what he describes as a mad idea of becoming an orchestral conductor.

"I studied classical clarinet and saxophone, too, at the University of East Anglia, but the reason I went there was that I wanted to be a conductor. Don't ask me why," he says. "I did actually conduct the university orchestra for a couple of years and played some concerts on the clarinet, but I began to realise that what I really wanted to do was play the saxophone."

So he took his double-bass to London.

"It sounds a bit daft but I found it was a really useful instrument to be able to play," he says. "There's always loads of saxophone players and a shortage of double-bassists, so I got work and got to meet people and, most valuably of all, I got to play with some great saxophone players, people like Bobby Wellins, Jean Toussaint, Stan Sulzmann and Don Weller, and I was able to study the way they played with them on the stage. Stan and Iain Ballamy were really helpful with advice, and then I had a few saxophone lessons with Steve Cottrell of the Delta Saxophone Quartet, but after that I was on my own, putting in six and seven hours' practice a day, which you really have to do at some point if you're going to take it seriously."

Siegel continued to play bass by night and practise saxophone by day and then began to get gigs on both instruments (he also plays bass clarinet with considerable distinction) until he decided to concentrate on the tenor saxophone as his main voice. He's seldom been short of work - or variety - since. He co-leads the hard-edged band Partisans with guitarist Phil Robson and has played in large-scale outfits including the Mike Gibbs Big Band, the Andrew Hill Anglo-American Big Band and Colin Townes's Mask Orchestra, as well as with Brazilian icon Hermeto Pascoal and in a trio with singer Norma Winstone and pianist Gwilym Simcock. He also has his own long-running quartet and has freelanced in Paris.

There was, though, something missing, and when he visited New York in 2003 he realised that what he needed to do was find something that pared music down to the essentials. Instead of writing compositions with detailed parts for each musician and set arrangements to work from, he wanted to play music that started with a simple idea or phrase and invited the musicians to create something new with it every time. Cohen and Baron were his ideal partners for such an enterprise and, with the help of a commission from Cheltenham Jazz Festival in 2006, he approached them.

"It was daunting in a way, I suppose, especially given their track records," he says. "But I'd met Greg socially and found him to be a really great person. And when I called him to do Cheltenham, he was really up for it. With Joey, it was a cold call, but, again, he's a really nice guy, very enthusiastic and very straightforward, and what I realised was, these are just musicians like all the rest of us. They need to work, so if it's something that interests them and is paying reasonable money and they're available, then they'll be there."

The trio's first date at Cheltenham went so well that Cohen and Baron immediately agreed to return to the UK for a tour the following year and they have now committed to the group as a regular project. One concert on the tour, at the Vortex in London, was recorded and has just been released as a double CD by Basho Records. It is, says Siegel, a snapshot of what the group sounded like on that particular day.

"I've written some new things for the upcoming tour, so we'll be playing some different music this time as well as some stuff we've played before," he says. "But the important and, I think, the exciting, thing about this group for everybody - musicians and listeners - is the dialogue between the musicians, which at the low volume we play at is very personal. It's not classical music but it's similar to a recital in that we're not blasting through a PA or even using monitors and you just hear the natural sounds of the instruments. I like playing loud music, too, but Joey has this thing of being able to play really burning tempos really, really quietly. So we're all listening to each other and creating something very much in the moment."