The ESB jazz series autumn season opened with a concert which, on paper, promised a lot more than it ultimately delivered. The great altoist Lee Konitz's first visit to Dublin for many years placed him in the context of a trio that was new to him, one which, whatever its skills as a unit, never seemed comfortable with its star soloist, nor he with them.

The results were bizarrely unsettling. Konitz, diffident but courteous, played well enough; he's such an imaginative player that there was always a surprise and logic in what he did. But he didn't seem to be really engaged with fully by the backing trio - Antonio Farao (piano), Gilles Naturel (bass) and Jean-Pierre Arnaud (drums) - to such an extent that, by his standards, he sounded almost as if he were on autopilot.

There was little sense of the lift he needs to produce his best, nor of the dialogue that could support, provoke and stimulate him properly. He retains a wry sense of humour; asking the audience to hum a given note, he opened with an otherwise unaccompanied Alone Together, before standing aside for a trio piece, Black Inside, which was well-ordered, skilful and rather anonymous.

Although the tentative relationship between the soloist and the trio remained in evidence throughout the concert - Giant Steps, in 3/4, was typically cautious, and the alto seemed patently disturbed by the drumming on Brubeck's In Your Own Sweet Way - the pianist's comping for Konitz seemed more sensitive in the second set. Certainly, Body and Soul was both Konitz's and the group's best performance of the night, but while Farao supported the alto well on Stella By Starlight, the trio seemed disjointed and ill at ease until Konitz was finished; the contrast was marked when they functioned as a trio unit without the fourth element.

No doubt this concert was intended to open the series with a flourish, but if that was the case, it turned out to be a limp-wristed and rather ill-considered one.