Downtown New York came to Dublin in the guise of Yeah No, the impressive quintet led by the tenor saxophonist and clarinettist Chris Speed, when the group opened a three-week international tour at the Sugar Club on Wednesday.
Chris Speed's Yeah No
Sugar Club, Dublin
Ray Comiskey
Brought in by the Improvised Music Company, the band is a fine example of the ability of jazz to renew itself through its contact with other musical cultures without losing sight of some of the qualities that created the idiom in the first place.
The most obvious extracurricular source is the comparatively broad spectrum of Balkan music, both in terms of rhythms and the use of modal material. But there were other elements in the mix, including rock, sparing use of electronics, free jazz and even the enduring presence of bop, which, no matter how frequently it's dismissed, always seems to turn up, not so
much an unwanted guest at the party as one that refuses to go away and somehow, after all, insinuates itself into the fun.
The quintet is favoured not only with exceptional players but also with an unusual line-up; besides Speed's beautifully toned tenor and limpidly expressive clarinet, there is the marvellous trumpet of Cuong Vu, Ted Reichman's rich accordion and the resonantly centred electric bass of Skulli Sverisson. Above all there is the sui generis Jim Black, a one-off, truly great ensemble drummer.
Speed's gifts as a composer and arranger were evident in the first set, in which the blend he got from such a small group was lovely. Mostly the set dealt with what was essentially an ensemble music, with little that could be recognised as solo work in the accepted jazz sense. The interest lay in the overall colour, the rhythms used and the interplay within the band.
There was also a sense that some of the limits of this approach were being reached by the end of the set, so it was rewarding to find that the second set saw the band open out much more. It allowed a better appreciation of what Speed, Cuong Vu and Black, in particular, could do - Reichman continued to be used exclusively, except for one spot at the end, as an ensemble voice, though often an improvised one.
The results were exhilarating. Even the free episodes and the deliberate courting of dissonance were used with a canny appreciation of the value of dynamics and dramatic contrast - a kind of organised chaos that worked brilliantly. This is a cutting-edge band to savour and enjoy.
Enrico Pace
& Igor Roma
National Concert Hall, Dublin
Michael Dervan
Messiaen - Visions De L'Amen. Brahms - Haydn Variations. Rachmaninov - Suite No 2
If musicians could play exactly together, many musical performances would be a lot less interesting. The fact that a 16-member orchestral violin section playing a line in unison doesn't just sound like a single violin multiplied in volume is due to the tiny discrepancies of ensemble, intonation and articulation that are inevitable in this kind of human endeavour.
Some areas of musical activity are a lot less tolerant of imprecision than others. Matters of intonation are clearly beyond pianists' control, yet the repertoire for two pianos is among the most demanding you can find, at least in terms of required rhythmic exactitude. Given the piano's clarity of attack, rhythmic lapses that would hardly register between other instruments
stick out clearly and result in
unpleasant ricochet effects and clatteriness.
The two Italian pianists who played at the National Concert Hall on Wednesday, Enrico Pace and Igor Roma, are both former prizewinners at Dublin International Piano Competition. In a programme that was as uncompromising as their playing they showed their grasp of the two-piano medium to be formidable.
Messiaen's Visions De L'Amen, written for and premièred with the composer's young pupil Yvonne Loriod in 1943, is a 50-minute, clangorously contemplative reflection on the meanings the composer felt could be ascribed to the word "amen". The two pianists play quite distinct roles, "speed, allure and
quality of sound" mattering more
for the first piano, "the thematic elements, everything demanding emotion and power" granted to the second.
At times the sought-after grandeur is of an order that seems to demand some kind of super-piano, an instrument designed to transcend all the tonal and dynamic constraints of the concert grand as we know it. Pace (playing the first part, which Messiaen allotted to Loriod) and Roma unfolded the work with a sense of masterly, controlled striving, the perfumed harmonies taking on a slightly acrid tinge when the straining was at its greatest.
Brahms's Haydn Variations and Rachmaninov's Second Suite made for a second half high on internal contrasts, the Brahms all musical sinew, the Rachmaninov a virtuoso display of imaginatively textured finish, played with a daring and often dazzling dash that was clearly intended to bring the house down.
