Er­line An­drews

Jazz mu­si­cian An­tho­ny "Tony Paul" Woodroffe gave his first so­lo show at the Kaiso Blues Cafe on Ju­ly 10, show­ing an in­creased mas­tery of his craft and a more com­mand­ing stage pres­ence, ac­cord­ing to one pa­tron who had seen Woodroffe per­form pre­vi­ous­ly.

Woodroffe per­formed at the cafe last month with ca­lyp­so jazz band Elan Par­le and he last per­formed so­lo two years ago.

Dressed in a black shirt, suit, tie and ten­nis sneak­ers, Woodroffe seemed in­tent on dis­play­ing all that he had learned over decades as a mu­si­cian, from study­ing at the Leeds Col­lege of Mu­sic, and from an in­ten­sive five-day work­shop in 2014 with Cuban sax leg­end Paquito D'Rivera.

Backed up by four oth­er mu­si­cians, he played the sax–so­pra­no, al­to and tenor–the flute, and a shak­er. He sang at one point–putting his ca­pa­ble though not spec­tac­u­lar vo­cals to the stan­dard You Don't Know What Love Is–af­ter­ward jok­ing­ly re­as­sur­ing the au­di­ence that he wasn't go­ing to sing again for the night.

He al­so showed ver­sa­til­i­ty in his set list. Start­ing off the evening with Coltrane and mak­ing his way to more up­beat pieces from Andy Narell, he al­lowed the mu­si­cians that shared the stage with him to shine. Pan play­er Natasha Jones, in par­tic­u­lar, gave a num­ber of crowd-pleas­ing so­los. A so­lo from gui­tarist Theron Shaw al­so drew warm ap­plause. Bass play­er Rod­ney Alexan­der gave a steady and no­table per­for­mance, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the cli­max to the band's ren­di­tion of You Don't Know.

With key­boardist Michael Low Chew Tung and drum­mer Von Best, the band formed a tight, im­pres­sive unit, a team of mu­si­cians who clear­ly re­spect each oth­er and have be­come used to and en­joy play­ing to­geth­er. When singer Vaugh­nette Big­ford took to the stage af­ter the in­ter­mis­sion, it capped a sol­id evening of en­ter­tain­ment.

"I think it was a suc­cess," Woodroffe said, as­sess­ing his re­turn to so­lo per­for­mance. "I felt the band was re­al­ly co­he­sive with some stel­lar play­ing by all. We had fun and some of the per­sons that at­tend­ed the show said they en­joyed it im­mense­ly."

"The next step is for me to con­tin­ue re­fin­ing my craft and keep putting out shows," he added.

Kaiso Blues Caf� (for­mer­ly Mar­tin's) seems to have come in­to its own as a per­for­mance space, with its high vault­ed gal­va­nized ceil­ing cov­ered by a black foam coat­ing which, own­er and mu­si­cal icon Carl Ja­cobs boast­ed, made for its high qual­i­ty acoustics. Lit­tle spots of green light pro­ject­ed on the ceil­ing gave the feel­ing–some­what–of be­ing un­der the night sky.

"The cafe is to pro­mote lo­cal mu­sic and show­case lo­cal artists and en­ter­tain­ers, of which we have so many," said Ja­cobs. "(There's) so much tal­ent that goes un­no­ticed. We feel it's nec­es­sary that we do this be­cause no one else is do­ing it."

There's a per­for­mance at the cafe every night ex­cept Mon­day and Wednes­day. The of­fer­ings are var­ied, from spo­ken word to reg­gae.

"Every tal­ent that is avail­able on the plan­et," said Ja­cobs.