When Marlow Jazz Club's Michael Eagleton decided to bring Peter King, Europe's number one alto sax player, together with Buckinghamshire's own tenor player Simon Spillett, winner of the BBC's Rising Star award 2007, for the very first time, you could hear the electricity spark and crackle just at the mere prospect. And right from the opening bars of Kurt Weill's Speak Low, there was a confidence and ebullience about the playing that told you this was going to be something special. The two front men fitted together with the precision of a finely crafted dove-tail joint, taking the heads' together and then splitting off for individual solos.

Peter and Simon added a new shine and polish to numbers such as Tubby Hayes's Star Eyes and Siroya, and Sonny Rollins's Oleo. The Be-Bop Preservation Society would have been proud of their rendition of I Remember April. Far from being dwarfed by Peter's reputation, Simon stepped on the gas and produced great solo work, of which his improvisation on Nobody Else But Me was a perfect example, while Peter showed why he's not lost any of his pace and inventiveness with wonderful work on Clifford Brown's Joy of Spring and the truly shimmering solo on the segued number Lush Life/Body and Soul.

Impeccably supported throughout by the Frank Toms Trio (Frank on piano, Dennis Smith on drums and Matt Ridley on bass), they brought the evening to a rip-roaring finale with a barn-storming version of that wonderful old standard Cherokee.

Ian Berrido