The fans turned up in force to celebrate a year’s good jazz at the University of Natal’s Centre for Jazz and Popular Music. The occasion was the final Wednesday evening Trios concert, except that it was Mike Rossi and three of our top creative musicians. If you haven’t experienced the atmosphere and the music at the weekly Trios sundowner concerts, you’ll have to wait until next February when they start again. They’re worth the wait.

Mike Rossi can improvise with impressive ease and in just about any style on tenor and soprano saxophones, clarinet, flute and piccolo. He’s one of those rare birds, a musician’s musician who is not happy with second best. He puts everything he has into whatever he’s playing and his idiomatic sense of style validates every note. If it’s standards you want; no problem. He can take Ellington or any jazz great and rework it into a startling new framework; rather like a gem in a novel setting. Rossi is equally at home with his own material and generous enough to share it with his fellow musicians.

Durban is so lucky that pianist Melvin Peters is still here. He has the quality that would make him a star and a fortune just about anywhere. He and Rossi communicate so well and the result is sometimes breathtaking. This is no exaggeration. Ask anyone who was there.

Add the many gifts of bassist Bongani Sokhela and drummer Sean Petersen and you have a quartet that would please just about anyone. It’s a tightly-knit outfit that can switch from Abdullah Ibrahim to Coltrane, taking in some fine standards on the way. The added bonus of this venue is the general atmosphere which is, well, good.

Add the many gifts of bassist Bongani Sokhela and drummer Sean Petersen and you have a quartet that would please just about anyone. It’s a tightly-knit outfit that can switch from Abdullah Ibrahim to Coltrane, taking in some fine standards on the way. The added bonus of this venue is the general atmosphere which is, well, good.