Alongside his globally significant career as a painter, Alan Davie maintained a strong involvement in music throughout his life: playing saxophone professionally in dance bands during the late Forties; working as a jobbing jazz musician on the Soho jazz scene in the Fifties; collaborating with some of Britain’s leading free jazz musicians (Tony Oxley, Evan Parker, Barry Guy and others) on a series of LPs and performances in the Seventies; improvising on the piano for two hours a day right up to his death in 2014. Throughout his career Davie’s improvisation in jazz was seen as analogous to his spontaneous, intuitive approach to painting.