Dave Binney Quartet Whelan's, DublinAt Whelan's on Wednesday the superstitious would have found support for the belief that things good or bad occur in threes.
Having been preceded by the high-calibre bands of Chris Speed and Dave Berkman, the quartet of the altoist and composer Dave Binney was the third cutting-edge New York group brought in this year by the Improvised Music Company. It says much for the quality of Binney's band that they virtually eclipsed their predecessors.
This youthful group - pianist Jacob Sacks, bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Dan Weiss looked barely old enough to vote, while Binney could not be mistaken for their father - were astonishing. Playing what the leader explained was almost all new music, individually and collectively they impressed with their complete command of the material, their ability to get inside it and stretch it rhythmically, harmonically and in terms of line, yet maintain a sense of direction and resolution in their overall performance.
Typical of their approach was the first set's closer, a medium-up rocker called Try, on which the quartet turned in a performance of extraordinary flexibility and invention on the slenderest of harmonic bases. It was something they did time and again in this engrossing concert, revealing a level of interaction and mutual awareness that was always compelling.
On the medium-up Latin P.F., Binney's marvellous alto solo was followed by an equally adventurous and engrossing piano outing in which the interplay between Sacks and the superbly judged drumming of Weiss was almost telepathic. And when it came to ballads, a beautiful This Could Be Home allowed Binney and Sacks to show the more lyrically expressive side of their solo work, as well as the delicacy of support of Weiss and Morgan.
There was more of the same in a second set that opened with a coruscating Last Minute and continued with some extraordinarily beautiful individual and collective performances on Rainey and Lisliel. Binney was even more impressive in this set.
The encore emphasised just how adventurous and malleable this quartet are. They offered a crisp, uptempo performance of Wayne Shorter's attractive Lester Left Town. It was the closest they came to straight-ahead playing all night.
