As befits the EU's multi-accession weekend, there was a strong international flavour to the first two days of this year's Bray Jazz Festival at the Mermaid Theatre.
Bray Jazz Festival
Bray
Ray Comiskey
Not all of it added greatly to the gaiety of nations, but when it did it was rather special.
Friday's opening concert featured the Hedvig Hanson band from Estonia, a country with a longer jazz tradition than might be realised.
There were jazz groups of a sort in Tallinn in the mid-20s, and a receptive audience for the marvellous musicians from nearby Sweden and Norway even during Soviet times.
Hanson's band wasn't in that class, but it was competent enough and, refreshingly, refused to settle for a knee-jerk reliance on standards or familiar jazz originals.
Instead the band - Hanson (vocals), Andre Maaker (guitar), Raun Juurikas (piano), Ara Yaralyan (bass) and Tanel Ruben (drums) - used their own material, much of which was penned by Hanson, laced with some traditional Estonian pieces and Sade's Stronger Than Pride.
The leader is a capable if rather derivative singer.
Her influences coming as much from Brazilian and Estonian music as from jazz, but there's little indication of a more personal synthesis in her work.
She has an engagingly natural stage presence, however, and, with the band put on a pleasant if undemanding show.
Saturday night at the Mermaid was a game of two halves - unevenly divided.
Opening was the Andreas Georgiou Quartet from Cyprus, with the leader on guitars, Dany Athampoulou (vocals), Peter Bockius (bass) and Panos Economou (drums).
Originals by the leader and some traditional Cypriot material, using the singer as an instrumental voice, provided the repertoire.
Collectively, though, the group's reach exceeded its grasp.
What interest the music had was more rhythmic than linear or harmonic.
Athampoulou's pitching wasn't always secure, and Georgiu's self-indulgent playing began to seem interminable, particularly the final piece with which he over-ran his time slot.
As a result, Khanda's concert with Hungarian violinist Zoltan Lantos started late. The wait was worth it.
Lantos is a phenomenally gifted musician, with breathtaking technique, ideas and feeling.
While Khanda - Ronan Guilfoyle (bass guitar), Ellen Cranitch (flutes), Martin Nolan (pipes/whistles), Ronan Browne (accordion), Tommy Halferty (guitar) and Conor Guilfoyle (drums) - continue to work small miracles of togetherness despite few opportunities to perform in public.
In this case praise for the way Lantos and Khanda integrated with each other was particularly deserved. This was especially so given that neither could have had much opportunity for rehearsal.
Two pieces from his excellent Five Cities suite, Jig and the rousing final movement, were composed by Ronan Guilfoyle, while the remainder, which included Raindelay, Minimal Paraphrase, Ashkelon and a beautiful ballad, For all those who mourn, came from Lantos.
Drawing from Hungarian and what sounded like Balkan sources, as well as jazz, Lantos has created a synthesis that allows full rein to his considerable imagination.
This was in much the same way that Khanda's blend of Irish, Indian and jazz elements works for them.
It was, all things considered, a wonderful example of give and take, and was superbly marshalled by Lantos and empathetically engaged with by Khanda.
There were some slightly shaky moments, notably on the tricky Ashkelon - which had an excellent flute solo over a bass pedal, and a violin solo that ranged more and more freely as it developed.
But the concert was full of things to remember - the violin and guitar solos on Minimal Paraphrase, Martin Nolan's pipes on Jig, adventurous accordion on Raindelay, and the closing Five Cities movement, which had a lengthy, coruscating, unaccompanied violin introduction and an exhilarating guitar and violin chase.
In their collective ability to get inside the challenges presented by the material and express the music itself, Khanda and Lantos were both impressive and immensely enjoyable.
Carlsberg Kilkenny Rhythm & Roots Weekend
Kilkenny
Tony Clayton-Lea
Seven years on the go, and still it continues to surprise. As the memory of each successive year of this fine festival fades so comes another batch of roots music goodies to further strengthen its enduring appeal.
Running on a tight budget means that rarely will the Kilkenny Rhythm & Roots Weekend organising committee ever have a major player; what it gets that other festivals of a similar nature don't, however, is that small - unknown, even - is beautiful.
It's impossible to know, of course, whether these minor Americana/folksy acts will be able to transcend the critical appreciation heaped upon them.
One such is Richmond Fontaine. From Portland, Oregon, only half of the band makes it to Kilkenny - singer/writer Willie Vlautin and guitarist Dan Eccles. That two self-effacing people such as these are able to sew the festival up in neat, hand-stitched touches is no small achievement.
Over the course of the weekend Richmond Fontaine played three gigs, each a treasure trove of discreet short stories set to a rhythmic base of acoustic guitar and gently-weeping slide.
The band's songs inevitably reflect the darker side of life on the sidelines, yet there is nothing shallow or cliched about the characters that Vlautin writes about. Rather, they come alive through expertly pitched, salutary and often quite profound vignettes that are enhanced beautifully by musical instinct, country music know-how and a pop sensibility that marks them out as nothing less than Fountains of John Wayne.
On at least two occasions, Richmond Fontaine played before Laura Veirs, a Seattle-based singer/songwriter whose latest album, Carbon Glaciers, has been picking up some rave reviews across the mainstream and niche media.
Proper judgement will, alas, have to wait until Veirs plays a solo gig (she' s playing in Dublin on June 18th) as her reserved stream-of-consciousness song writing is both low-key and an acquired taste. Call it the blessed curse of Richmond Fontaine, but on these occasions Veirs simply failed to transcend the excellence of her support band.
No such minor tragedies befell Caitlin Cary, Jay Farrar or Rosie Thomas.
While Thomas trod a thin line between twee humour and several gorgeous piano-driven ballads, Cary came on strong and genuinely funny from the start. Singing songs mostly from her excellent recent album I'm Staying Out, Cary clearly had the resilience and the authority to quell the doubters in the audience - something that Thomas definitely fell foul of.
Farrar, on the other hand, over the space of two gigs (each of which was complemented by guitarist James Walbourne) confirmed his high quality status as alt.country pioneer turned class act.
Other highlights? There are too many to mention, but we can safely say that Dave Alvin & the Guilty Men let off musical equivalents of cherry bombs, and that Michael Weston King's soundcheck actually stopped people talking and drinking.
The festival closes today at 3 p.m. in Cleeres, when Terry Allen brings his blend of intelligence and irreverence to town. And, yes, we're looking forward to year number eight already.
Rogé, RTÉ NSO/Markson
NCH, Dublin
Michael Dervan
Reinhard Febel - Sphinxes
Mozart - Piano Concerto in F K459
Schumann -- Symphony No 2
RTÉ commissioned two new works for the Schumannfest by the RTÉ NSO under Gerhard Markson.
For the opening programme of the series Seóirse Bodley ciphered letters from Schumann's name into his Metamorphoses on the Name Schumann. For the second, last Friday, the German composer Reinhard Febel's Sphinxes engaged more directly with Schumann's music and life.
On the one hand, Febel makes quotations from Schumann's music, on the other he attempts to deal with what he calls the tragic aspect of the composer's life, "his personality falling apart; the loss of control; the jump into the river Rhine; then the quiet ending, looking back to the beginning".
Febel treats the orchestra in an intentionally blurred and disorienting way, withideas, as it were (some of them Schumann's), emerging out of haze. The fragmentation is oddly threatening, and even the most distinct of musical material is denied clarity.
Markson's performance had moments in which things sounded unnecessarily tentative, particularly in passages of spaced-out dissolution. But the almost unrelieved bleakness that Febel seems to have in mind was well communicated.
Although Schumann was in buoyant spirits when he sketched his Second Symphony in December 1845, he seems to have struggled to complete it. He later wrote of having been "half sick", and of how the work reminded him "of a dark time" - in May 1846 he had complained of "a constant singing and roaring in the ears".
The affirmativeness of most of the music does, however, seem to contradict the idea of interpreting this as a dark symphony.
And Gerhard Markson's handling of the three fast movements was as affirmative as you could wish. The direct thrust of his manner carried the music with persuasive sweep, and he was also sensitive in his response to the songful melancholy of the slow movement.
Pascal Rogé was the soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto in F, K459. His playing was beautifully turned, graceful, and pianistically impeccable, but altogether too bland. He was not helped by the fact that the orchestral accompaniment tended to be overweight and opaque in relation to the lightness of his playing.
The RTÉ NSO's Schumannfest continues in Limerick next Thursday and Dublin on Friday.
Mum
Vicar Street, Dublin
Ed Power
If scented candles were allowed vote for their favourite album of all time the winner would be Mum's 2002 debut Finally We Are No One, less a record than a collection of soothing noises tacked to a furtive dance beat.
The Icelandic group makes music that is as intangible as a day dream. Their songs lurk in the background with the tasteful unobtrusiveness of a floral print or minimalist lampshade.
All of which means Mum are the perfect accompaniment to a soothing bath or espressos on a hazy Sunday morning. As a live proposition, however, they strain the listener's endurance.
Sitting through 90 minutes of avant-garde cooing, whale-moans and fractured electronica that can't decide whether it wants to be a bass-line or the sound of a fridge malfunctioning stir a range of emotions. Enjoyment is rarely one of them.
At Mum's Dublin concert, you didn't so much want to lose yourself in the ethereal fug as double over and start snoring. Many in the audience appeared to be engaged in earnest conversation with the person beside them or with their mobile phone. The music seemed a polite distraction.
It's a little unfair, of course, to condemn what is essentially a left-of-centre chill-out act for being... well, chilled out. Had we anticipated something else? Long-haired blokes on unicycles playing double-headed guitars with their teeth, perhaps?
Nevertheless, Mum floundered more often than soared. They were such a sprawl - a jumble of guitarists, violinists and lap-top boffins - that anarchy always felt just a misplaced bow-string or wine spill away. Sometimes it was difficult to tell whether they were tuning up or had already plunged into the next number. You suspected Mum weren't entirely sure themselves.
Of no help was the anonymity of much of the material. Mum's repertoire is restricted to two kinds of song: bleary instrumentals that suggest countrymen Sigur Ros with crippling hangovers and slight dance excursions that sound forever on the brink of becoming interesting but never quite do.
What saved Mum from being - literally - a snooze was front woman Jonsi Birgisson. With her 1950s-style print dress and whispered vocals, she could have passed for Bjork's slightly less dotty younger sister. Her voice isn't nearly as haunting as she has been led believe yet it is a powerful instrument, evoking images of tidal swells and forlorn snowscapes. Far too frequently, though, Birgisson was a lone bright note in a swirl of stylish incoherence.
As the set meandered to a close, you wondered if Mum mightn't spruce things up with a cover. Wham's Wake Me Up Before You Go Go would have been appropriate.
