Jean Toussaint At Dock Street Jazz Club

Jean Toussaint
Dock Street Jazz Club
Belfast, N. Ireland
November 28, 2025

 A filthy night in Belfast. Relentless rain. The real wet stuff, as they say here.  The sort of Sunday night where it would take a damned good reason to venture out. Jean Toussaint was reason enough. It is not every day, after all, that one of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers comes to town.

In the warmth of The American Bar, in Belfast's old docks quarter, a goodly crowd was squeezing the last life out of the weekend. Pints and chat. In a corner, ten musicians bunched around a table were getting stuck into a set of jigs and reels. For most of the punters it was background music, but the fiddles, mandolins, harp, accordion and bodhran charged the air. People chatted away but applauded at the end all the same. However, when a woman struck up the ballad "The Boys of Barr na Sráide," unaccompanied, the bar fell stony silent for the duration.

Jazz has a similar relationship with the public. For many, and often, it is background music. When it comes to jazz and decorum much depends on the type of venue. Big festivals can mean big noise. Intimate clubs and artsy concert halls tend to confer a hushed communion with the music. A bit of discreet chat is fine, but better can it for the ballads.

Above the trad session, in the upstairs room of The American Bar, is Dock Street Jazz Club. People come here to listen. It has been like this every Sunday since the venue's September launch with a gig by Egyptian pianist Rami Attallah (see review). Some great local, national and international artists have performed here, but none with quite the luster of Jean Toussaint.

Four years with the Jazz Messengers (1982-1986). Gigs with McCoy Tyner, Max Roach and Horace Silver. That is serious pedigree. London-based since the '80s, the Caribbean-born saxophonist has played with several generations of the UK's best musicians.

And for the past two decades, Toussaint has established an enduring musical bond with Northern Irish drummer David Lyttle—the man behind Dock Street Jazz Club's programming. They pair have played many times together, while Toussaint has released several albums on Lyttle's independent label, Lyte Records.  

Joining Toussaint and Lyttle on the stage were organist Myles Drennan and guitarist Phil Remon. The opener, "On Green Dolphin Street" served an early reminder of Toussaint's exceptional chops. When the mood takes him he can burn the place down with his Selmer, but there is more frequently a warm, lilting quality to his phrasing that perhaps owes something to his childhood in the Caribbean. In between solos from saxophone, organ and guitar, Lyttle worked his kit in short bursts, his body language a mixture of intense concentration and relaxed come-what-may spontaneity. Toussaint looked on approvingly.

Jazz standards provided the currency, but the familiar formula did not mean that the sound of surprise was in short supply. On the contrary, this was a performance brimming with scintillating, improvisational interplay. Lyttle's solo on "Bye Bye Blackbird"—using one stick to damp and alter the pitch of the drumheads as he pursued a melody with the other—foreshadowed improvisations from Toussaint, Remon and Drennan that, in turn, upped the collective ante. It had only taken a couple of songs for the limbering up to make way for more playful risk taking.  

Introducing a tune,  Lyttle got his "April in Paris" and his "I'll Remember April" mixed up. "It doesn't matter to me anyway, you know," he quipped, "I'll keep playing the same thing." It was essentially the truth, for the MOBO-nominated drummer is the most intuitive of musicians, responding to and shaping the music in the moment. With the driving power of Art Blakey—an early influence—and the imaginative ornamentation of Ari Hoenig. He whipped up a storm against Toussaint's barreling bebop lines on the Gene de Paul standard, then eased back on the throttle for Drennan and Remon's replies—always mixing it up. His own solo, an arresting mosaic of shades, earned the loudest applause.

Fascinating too, the dialogs between Toussaint and Remon that played out in the dying embers of several tunes. At times, their improvisational push and pull teetered on the edge of meandering, only for one or the other to suddenly catch a current and bring about lift off. Generating a big, bluesy sound from his Aria guitar, Remon seemed to feel every wringing note, vocalizing as he soloed. Rhythmically, he was a near constant presence.

Whether caressing the ballad "Body and Soul," or attacking bebop standards, the guitarist matched Toussaint's solo for brilliant solo. A request from the audience to close with a blues was granted—a swinging blues that invited strong closing statements from all.

The swing feel of jazz is not so far removed from an Irish jig, which is based on triplets—both exude a dancing quality.  And jazz, like Irish traditional music, has a strong aural culture. The tunes Toussaint, Lyttle, Remon and Drennan played may be enshrined in jazz lore, but there was nothing rote about this vibrant performance. These musicians have big ears. And so does the Dock Street Jazz Cub audience.

Comments