Although he is known as the saxophonist with long-running blues and rock group The Climax Blues Band, Chris ‘Beebe’ Aldridge plays a number of instruments and writes his own material too.
His talents were shown to good effect when his latest project, Endangered Species, played to an appreciative audience at the Cathedral Hotel.
With Andy Robertson on bass, Matt Ratcliffe on keyboards and drummer Martin Johnson, the quintet was aided by local musician Nick Dewhurst, eschewing his more usual trumpet and guitar in favour of flugelhorn and valve trombone. Beebe played flute, tenor saxophone, and baritone sax.
The set consisted of mostly original music, which ran the gamut from ballad forms to more experimental rhythm based pieces, allowing all five of the players to both solo and play more supportive roles.
The Witches was a long form opener, with a looped flute part and some interesting sounds produced on the trombone.
Mo Better Blues was a melodic foot-tapper that owed just as much to gospel as it did to blues, with an intricate harmony part for the two leaders to play over, while Sea Shells was perhaps the most experimental moment of the night, with Beebe alternating between all of his instruments, shifts in time signatures and some propulsive keyboard playing.
The Elegant was a through written piece which showed the strength of the band as a collective whole.
The second set featured Lilly and the Purple, which started off as a slow piece, but gradually built in dynamics, before Silly Beggars was another showcase for the collective sound of the band, allowing for some inspired collective playing and some of the better soloing of the evening.