The essence of unity

"DOES anybody here really know how good he is?" So said the great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins after playing with Stan Tracey for the first time at Ronnie Scott's in 1965.

Now, at last, it seems that someone in power in the arts establishment finally does.

For this brilliant octogenarian, after his youthful years with the bands of Kenny Baker and Ted Heath, an underpaid era through the 1960s as house pianist at Ronnie Scott's in Soho when he skilfully accompanied the most powerful US jazz musicians in the world, penurious periods playing for virtually nothing except love in London pubs and gigging where he could for a living, he plays at the renowned Barbican centre in the midst of the city of London's monied arts grandeur, with some of the finest of British jazz musicians who have been with him along the parts of his life journey in music.

So late in justice and so long waiting for recognition.

Throughout these decades, Tracey created some of the finest albums in the story of jazz in Britain, such as Under Milk Wood, waxed in 1965 with his quartet, The Return of Captain Adventure in 1975 and three big band sessions - Alice in Jazz Land of 1966, a tribute to Ellington called We Still Love You Madly of 1989 and Genesis, also of 1989, which seeks to transform the creation myth into vibrant sound.

Born in Denmark Hill and bred in Tooting, Tracey is absolutely a south Londoner who has never been a musical nomad. The great concert halls of the world have never been his prime venues.

I remember him sparking his genius through the 1970s in a modest public bar of a south London pub with some of the music's most powerful British practitioners - drummer John Stevens, trumpeter Harry Beckett and altoist Mike Osborne.

He seemed musically and culturally attuned there, even with the privileged ears of only a dozen or so avid listeners.

So, to see him now in the Barbican arena in front of a packed and reverent concert hall audience is quite a shock, maybe even for him.

But, shock or not, he plays superbly and with all his powers, beginning with a trio piece from Ellington in 1932 with bassist Andrew Cleyndert and his drummer son Clark, It Don't Mean a Thing if it Aint Got that Swing.

All the Tracey characteristics came bursting out, the Monkish phrases, quick turns and sudden corners, the stridish leaps and unexpected changes of pace, the percussive power of this white African piano drummer striking his keys in a city of another continent where African life is thriving in its southern neighbourhoods, New Cross, Peckham and Lewisham, and wherever he goes with his bassist's deep springing strings and his son's feathery drums.

"Is there an octet in the house?" he calls out whimsically and the five horns walk on the stage to augment the trio and perform Nuke's Fluke, dedicated to his old admirer Rollins and giving an opportunity to savour not only the tune's bustling theme, Mark Nightingale's tricky trombone slides and Tracey's own keyboard effervescence, but also the eruption of wild notes from the horn of the young altoist Sammy Main, sounding not unlike the early irreverence of a youthful Bruce Turner half a century ago.

Umberto's Dream features the burnished trumpet sound of Guy Barker, who played with Tracey on the 2006 album Let Them Crevulate.

The Cuban Connection begins with some jivey Latin paces from Tracey before tenorist Simon Allen enters into a splurging chorus, soon joined by a bristling solo from his tenor partner Mornington Lockett.

The same saxophone duo continue their sonic brotherhood on Time Spring, with its hugely engaging beginning and Tracey's Basie-like setting of the momentum, with a jumping intro before the entry of the horns and the eventual long moment of Clark Tracey with a solo feast of drums.

Suddenly, there are 12 horns on the stage and it is time for the Stan Tracey Big Band with a rare performance of his orchestral suite Genesis.

So, why does a very urban Londoner who began his performing life playing the accordion in the forces as part of an ENSA band have such a fervent fascination with the infinite stars and endless dimensions of space and the universe?

Perhaps, this is where his allegiance with and admiration for the huge and special musical brain of Duke Ellington finds its fullest expression.

In the immensity of the Ellingtonian musical imagination, Tracey has frequently found his own galaxies of sound and originality and, as the horns bite into the second movement of Genesis called The Light, the searching sounds of Main's alto, Lockett's tenor and the entire ensemble all seem to be looking for the truth, giving the story and explanation of its light.

As Tracey begins his solo, you reflect again how nobody plays quite like him - the sudden quirks, the rolls of unfettered sound and unexpected chimes of anchorage all sublimated by a relentless swing.

The same is true with the next movement, the collective glory of The Gathering, with Mark Armstrong's simmering muted trumpet and the open horn of another British veteran, trumpeter Henry Lowther, before it is Tracey again, still crouched territorily over his concert keyboard like he used to half a lifetime ago in a pub called The Plough in Stockwell, with a swinging rhapsody of sound and unheralded notes like the breaking of far-off galactic windows and chinks of sudden cosmic agitation.

Next, the night's apogee, a rendition of the movement called The Firmament, brought down to mere earthly sonics.

It is a stomping piano trio piece with Cleyndert ringing profoundly and Clark delivering a mosaic of percussion to his father's rush of energy and the furious 80 years of endless notes.

"It's 15 years since we played together. We've taken the precaution of not rehearsing and tickets aren't refundable," is how Tracey introduced his performance with his piano partner of T'n'T Keith Tippett.

They make a sound like no other duo. The piano as orchestra - massive, anthemic and multisonic - as played by Tippett, with the angular, percussive more minimalist impulses of Tracey.

Playing together. Two keyboards alone, with only each other to inspire. A diffusion of notes separate at their two sources, but fuse in their blending. Unique yet common, autonomous yet bonded, mightily distinct yet uncannily conjoined.

In short, the essence of jazz unity.

Tippett of Bristol and Tracey of London, the west and east of jazz in Britain.

Tracey's leaps and turns, sudden keyboard cries and convulsions ringing around the Barbican, with Tippett's more elaborate, declamatory phrases, filigrees and long sentences of sound almost Augustan in their relish, while Tracey drums out his messages.

Dialogues of unborn notes being born, moments of beautiful restraint and the unison of quiescence and pause, with sudden changes to universal recitative.

As the pianists played facing each other, it was call and response - the foundation of labour chants, chain gang dialogues, the musical exchanges of the enslaved and imprisoned, morphing through the long story of jazz to London's Barbican and out through endless space.

It has been quite a night of musical comradeship and musical brilliance.

Hopefully, it was recorded and will be available to all those who missed it.

Tracey is a precious jazz creator and a London musical original. Long live him and his music.

Supernova featuring Stan Tracey and Keith Tippett is out now on ReSteamed CD.