The Spin began its autumn season with the Transatlantic Quintet, a mix of UK and US players. This week the Canadian Connection featured Vancouver guitarist Daryl Jahnke (pictured) sharing the front line with Spin guitarist Pete Oxley. The quartet, on a short UK tour ending at Ronnie Scott’s in London, was completed by a driving rhythm section of Oly Hayhurst on bass and Russ Morgan, drums. A quartet with two guitarists could easily founder on the rocks of conflict and confusion if both players are too close in style, or too eager to be heard. In this case both showed respect and individuality so the potential for a lack of definition and differentiation was never a danger.

While Oxley tends to throw himself into a solo line with great speed and determination, Jahnke moves into his own improvisations with tangential, almost circumspect lines. While Oxley works with the unaltered sounds from his guitar and amp, Jahnke makes free and imaginative use of an effects box that included a Hammond organ-like sound that worked wonderfully against Oxley’s sharper sound. While Oxley is content, and masterful, with the conventional pick and finger, Jahnke moves away from the normal conventions of the jazz guitar by using a slide with great subtlety and effect. The result of all these stylistic diversities was music of surprising variety and solos of delightful personality.

Add to this the democratic arrangements of many of the pieces that allowed both Hayhurst’s ever-precise bass playing to shine through and Morgan’s energetic and imaginative percussion to shift to the front. Between them, these two provided a wonderfully strong rhythmic base, freeing both guitarists from the need to cover each other with comping lines, an approach that could also have accented the possible sameness of two guitarists.

New to the Spin audience, Jahnke’s compositions showed an intriguing blend of more upbeat jazz and a folk/rock mix, as in McCartney’s Blackbird, which also fitted perfectly with Oxley’s penchant for the so-called pastoral end of jazz. Altogether this was a highly enjoyable evening that satisfied both the Canadians in the audience and, particularly, those with a love for the great Pat Metheny.