A look at what is happening in the world of the arts this morning.
Summit - The Phil Ware Trio with Brendan Doyle
J J Smyth's, Dublin
Summit is a new Monday night residency at the Aungier Street jazz spot for the Phil Ware Trio, who will play there each week with a new guest; this week's was tenor saxophonist Brendan Doyle. The trio - Phil Ware (piano), Dave Redmond (bass) and Kevin Brady - is a working group, one of the finest in the mainstream idiom in the country, so a level of understanding and interplay can be taken for granted, as well as the adaptability to help each featured guest fit more comfortably into the environment.
The trio clicked into gear immediately, zipping into Cedar Walton's attractive jazz waltz, Clockwise, followed by a spacious, oblique sidle into I'll Remember April, treated with considerable freedom, which at one point briefly threatened to become too adventurous. It was evident, however, that the lightning fast reactions emphasised this was a working group.
Opening with his catchy Apocalypso, Brendan Doyle joined them for a hugely enjoyable night's music. There's a touch of the swagger of Sonny Rollins and Johnny Griffin about his playing, though his choice of material - Coltrane's Central Park West, Like Sunny, and Naima, and Dexter Gordon's Cheesecake - suggested he has listened to other tenors.
Be that as it may, his performance was a reminder of just how formidable a player he is. Always swinging, full of ideas coherently developed, his solos were a constant delight, while Phil Ware's trio provided him with a context in which he could stretch out, secure in the knowledge that no problems would arise. That the trio could handle so much material not in their normal repertoire is indicative of how good a unit it is.
The quartet probably reached their peak on a brilliant excursion through the minefield of Caravan and a beautiful performance on Coltrane's gentle ballad, Naima, which opened with a long unaccompanied tenor intro, on which Doyle repeatedly used a motif from the tune as a reference point; tenor and piano spots that followed were superb. By the time they closed with Doyle's minor blues, Wiggle Squiggle, it was clear Summit is an idea which can stand a lot of airing over coming months. Next week's guest is Louis Stewart.
Ray Comiskey
1974 - The End of the Year Show
Lyric Theatre, Belfast
It's 1974, the year of the Rumble in the Jungle, the Wombles in the charts and the upsurge in terrorist pub bombs. You'd have a vague notion it's Christmas, from the few strands of tinsel dangling limply in the stale air.
But, clearly, the people who run this alcohol treatment unit are not into positive thinking or having a good time. Not surprisingly, the three men banged up in this joyless hole, while friends and family are enjoying the festive season, are angry, bitter, despairing beings, taking their frustrations out on each other in a mixture of cruel humour and vulnerability. Damian Gorman's new play sets the clock ticking on the no-man's-land period between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve, revealing vivid glimpses into the past lives of former news journalist Frank, elderly vet Herbie and sweet young John, who is never likely to amount to very much.
Under Carol Moore's sensitive direction, John Kazek's swaggering, foul-mouthed Frank is the undisputed leader of this unhappy, marginalised trio, using shock tactics to dominate Gordon Fulton's tormented, mild-mannered Herbie and Martin McCann's stammering, eager-to-please John.
But their fine ensemble work is fractured by the arrival of Dr Marie Cull, who briefly attempts to introduce alternative thinking, relaxation techniques and woolly feminism to the ultra-macho regime created by the unit's full-time director. Maggie Cronin does her best with this rather two-dimensional role, as does Enrique Fonseca as the philosophical Bongani, a witness to terrible atrocities in his native Nigeria and one of very few black people resident in the North 30 years ago. Only slightly more successful is James Doran's posturing, sex-obsessed recovering alcoholic Jimmy, although Abbie Spallen hits precisely the right note as his put-upon wife Agnes.
Gorman's writing is as fluid and witty and acute as one would expect, but, oddly, one feels somehow removed from the men's painful individual battles against addiction.
One would be tempted to describe the piece as inconclusive and insulated, until Gorman pulls a trump card from up his sleeve, sounding an unexpectedly cheery note before landing the ultimate conclusive ending, the sucker punch from an outside world, about which, until now, they have all been entirely flippant and dismissive.
Runs until Feb 11
Palestrina Choir: The series of 10 Mozart Masses to be performed by the Dublin Palestrina Choir in the Pro-Cathedral on Marlborough Street will commence with Spatzen Mass K220 this Sunday, Jan 29 and not on Feb 26 as indicated last Tuesday
