R.I.P. Sir John Dankworth

The grey February skies don't cover the promise of a brighter earth beneath them, it seems. My gloomy Sunday morning cup of tea was accompanied by Eddie Reader on Radio Four telling the world how supportive and generous John Dankworth was as a musician, her articulate sadness heralding the news of his passing. The trumpeter Guy Barker was delivering a similar eulogy this morning on the Today programme. These people played with Dankworth, shared his enthusiasm for jazz and performance and now feel his loss as keenly as the millions of ordinary folks who were fans of his music, holding him in great affection in his role as musician, band leader and patriarch of a flourishing jazz dynasty.

The ordinary folks turned out in their droves a couple of years ago when Dankworth and his wife, Dame Cleo Laine, were given the accolade of headlining a concert in the Proms season at the Royal Albert Hall. It was something of an eightieth birthday celebration for them both. A jazz prom with two such legends was more than I could resist, so I attended. The place was packed with an interesting crowd of relaxed retirees for whom Dankworth and Laine provided the soundtrack to youthful escapades. At the pre-prom talk the crowd listened politely to Radio Three's Geoffrey Smith talk about Dankworth's recording career, but they saved their real applause for the great man himself as he casually strolled into the hall. The chipboard BBC table and cheap plastic chairs on stage suddenly seemed to morph into the comfortable leather of a gentleman's club, with the venerable jazzman chatting with affable ease about Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington as if they were simply men at the local corner shop who we'd all met - old, respected friends and colleagues from way back whom everyone must surely have had the chance to play with.

At the concert itself the atmosphere was extraordinary. Dankworth led the orchestra through a selection of his own compositions and jazz standards. People tend to think of jazz as being a rambling, free-form sort of music, but in this case Dankworth's leadership was a model of concentration and precision. He ensured that each soloist had their turn in the spotlight and yet that the ensemble always combined with the most powerful effect. Alternating between playing clarinet and sax himself, he displayed the hunched-over absorption of the reedsman, but never lost that crucial awareness of his fellow musicians. He was an elderly many then but he was still fleet of finger and keen of ear, never missing a beat or a note and still being able to clearly communicate his own personality through whatever he was playing.

Dankworth had a quiet style of showmanship, confident and assured without a hint of ego. When he introduced his wife he was clearly proud that this formidable force of nature, this melodic vocal hurricane, was his partner in music and in life. Dame Cleo had recently had some surgery and was assisted by a walking cane, but happily bantered away with her husband. Her singing voice was certainly unaffected. The marital dynamic between them was almost as entertaining as the musical performance. Entering their eighth decade, their strong personalities were undiminished and it was easy to see how they sparked off each other in happy creative abrasiveness. They performed an encore of "Take the A Train" that was impossible to forget, speedy and deft, tripping between lyric and melody easily but powerfully and completely overflowing with an energy that would put many younger performers to shame. In the heat of the summer prom hall, it was a joyful blast of pure cool. The audience went wild.

Now in February's wrong kind of cool, we feel the chill of fate parting this great jazz couple. John Dankworth died, but within hours Dame Cleo and her children found solace on stage, performing and no doubt letting the music take them over, gaining strength from turning in a performance worthy of the man who was sadly unable to join them that evening. And that's where the sunlight starts to peep through the clouds a little. To say that we will not see the like of John Dankworth again is to give in to unfounded pessimism. The baton has been passed, the music still carries on. As Eddie Reader said, we should all open up our windows and play John Dankworth's music loud out into the streets for everyone to hear. The guy was a legend and he left an incredible legacy of music behind him. Just because he had to saunter off stage, it doesn't mean that the music has to stop too.