Is jazz the contemporary classical music? Notwithstanding some jazzy elements in the music of John Adams, that claim wasn't substantiated by the inclusion of jazz for the first time in the RTÉ Living Music Festival, but it did yield some superb examples of jazz music today.
Among them was the internationally acclaimed Stockholm Jazz Orchestra, making its Irish debut under the direction of pianist and composer Jim McNeely in a programme of his own music. The works chosen were more complex, with longer form development than is common for jazz big bands, and it needed an orchestra of the SJO's warmth, precision and skill to do them justice.
The concert's opening three pieces, Extra Credit, Sticks and Absolution, which were over 10 years old, were surpassed by the remaining seven from recent years, where the writing was even richer and more imaginative. It was one of the finest examples of jazz big band writing ever heard here, culminating in the impressive musical (and political) statement of We Will Not Be Silenced.
A second concert at Vicar Street, later that night, offered Big Satan, led by alto saxophonist Tim Berne, with Marc Ducret (guitar) and Tom Rainey (drums), a group with a freewheeling approach to improvisation and sound creation. Berne's astringent, sour-toned alto is an almost primeval, deliberately primitive voice, Ducret is a virtuoso who produced some extraordinary sounds from his instrument, while Rainey was, as ever, remarkably imaginative, a unifying element; impossible to conceive of the music without him.
Their interaction was not merely in matters of line and rhythm, but also in terms of texture and drama. Harmonic concerns don't really arise in this music, even in the thematic material, yet the focused unanimity of their playing, however free, was essential in creating the music's structure.
Behind their dark, intense and often angular and dissonant work there was rigour and discipline to everything they did.
On Sunday in the John Field Room, White Rocket - Jacob Wick (trumpet), Greg Felton (piano), and Seán Carpio (drums) - showed approach to contemporary jazz closer to contemporary classical music. Four of the six pieces played - Recent Events and Symptoms by Wick, His Story by Felton and Kodály Exercise No 9, Book 55 arranged by Felton - came from the trio's debut a year ago, but their programme included the premiere of Felton's Dark Horse, a five-part work specially commissioned for the festival, and, Hone, by Carpio.
Despite the complexities of the composed material they gave a virtually flawless performance. Felton's Dark Horse, a substantial work drawing on jazz and classical elements, rhythms from Indian music, joint-free improvisation and what the composer described as "unconventional music notation", proved to be a remarkably cohesive and unified piece, beautifully performed, and in no sense an exercise in musical eclecticism.
Later in the John Field Room pianist Simon Nabatov, a brilliant, witty, mischievous maverick whose immense, classically honed technique and quicksilver imagination offer him virtually unlimited options, gave a solo concert. His performances are full of the unexpected; abrupt changes of mood, dynamics, register, line, harmony and rhythm.
More restrained, relatively speaking, than usual, he provided much engaging and capricious fun. But a glimpse of what he is capable of in terms of depth came in his finest performance, a disciplined and sustained development of a piece based on an eight-note motif which, he announced, he had written that morning.
Finally, the marriage of jazz improvisation and classical writing in American trombonist Ed Neumeister's Suite for Piano Quartet and Improvising Soloist, another LMF special commission, was, personally, underwhelming, but I'm leaving my colleague, Michael Dervan, to deal with that.
