I spent a long time not listening to jazz (my loss), and Charlie Haden's bass playing was one of the reasons I started. I first heard the music on the first of this two CD set around sixteen years ago, played via a cassette through a Sony Pro-Walkman connected to a large Naim system. It sounded astonishing and was probably the first time I sat and listened properly to a jazz recording. The music on disc one was recorded by Ken Christianson at Charlie Haden's fiftieth birthday party, and there's a real sparkle to the playing. I now own numerous Charlie Haden recordings, and in all of them there's a feeling that other musicians really like playing with him. Track two, Passport, features a bass and drum solo, and the respect and space the two musicians give each other is wonderful. Alan Broadbent's piano is both melodic and dynamically adventurous, but the night belongs to Charlie; the rhythmically and melodically inventive bass solo on Nardis well deserves its applause.

Disc two was recorded about a year later, and features the same musicians apart from Paul Motian replacing Billy Higgins on drums. Switching discs is fascinating and shows exactly how much the space in which the music is played influences the sound. The birthday party is up close and intimate; the second disc is recorded at Webster University St Louis is an altogether bigger, more reverberant affair that lifts, separates and brightens all the instruments. For all sorts of reasons I wanted to like the birthday party disc more, but the St Louis concert not only sounds amazing, the playing is electric. The 22 minute cover of Ornette Coleman's Lonely Woman is thrilling from start to finish, and throwing a bass version of the classic John Henry into the middle is as inspired as it is silly. This is a good album for people who think they don't like jazz, and an excellent one for the rest of us.