Holzmair and Cooper in Irish Museum of Modern Art and Dave Liebman in J. J. Smyth's, Dublin.
Dave Liebman
J. J. Smyth's, Dublin
By Ray Comiskey
J. J. Smyth's was standing-room only for the visit of the great saxophonist Dave Liebman, who was completing a short Irish tour with the bass guitarist Ronan Guilfoyle and the Dutch drummer and percussionist Chander Sardjoe. An audience packed with local musicians was clearly expecting something extraordinary - and that was what they got.
The last time I heard Liebman was a year ago, in the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, where, guesting with a somewhat buttoned-up Dutch group, he sounded half-asleep by his exalted standards. In the context of the free-blowing trio in
J. J. Smyth's, however, he was in superb form, energised by Guilfoyle, who had recently toured Australia and New Zealand with him, and, in particular, by the remarkable drumming of Sardjoe.
Opening on tenor - although he mostly used soprano, with occasional forays on a wooden flute - he made it clear that this was going to be a fruitful night's music. In an astonishing example of sustained, concentrated and inventive playing, he and his trio played two unbroken, hour-long sets of freely improvised music, full of light and shade, dramatic contrast and engaging interplay.
Although each member of the trio had solo "features", the group's modus operandi was constant dialogue, sometimes three way, sometimes simply in duo, with the leading voice frequently changing hands in a fluid but always purposeful manner. Rhythmic and linear ideas, motifs, were seized on and tossed around within the trio, sometimes developed further and at other times used as spurs to set off in a different direction.
It's a demanding approach for the musicians concerned - and, incidentally, for the audience - not least because of what it asks in terms of imagination, technique and quickness of response. Subtly nudged by Guilfoyle, some of the most striking moments came from the often arresting exchanges between Sardjoe - a great drummer - and Liebman. The saxophonist, as always, displayed an acute awareness of what was happening around him and evoked a similar level of awareness from his colleagues.
And he remains one of the most gifted virtuosos and cliché-free musicians in jazz. Accept no imitations.
Holzmair, Cooper
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
By Michael Dervan
Mozart, Haydn, Wolf
The Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair was on good form for his Association of Music Lovers concert at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Sunday afternoon.
His programme mixed English settings by Haydn and Masonic texts set by Mozart (both Haydn and Mozart were Freemasons), before a second half devoted entirely to settings of Eduard Mörike by Hugo Wolf - this year is the bicentenary of Mörike's birth.
Haydn's songs are often given what you might call the pretty-ditty treatment by modern performers. It's not the sort of approach you would expect Holzmair to take, and it's certainly not an approach that would make any
sense given the fibrous richness
that Imogen Cooper finds in the
piano parts.
Sunday's performances showed the more extrovert end of Holzmair's stage manner, with carefully choreographed gestures and with physical movements that were sometimes designed to be carried through well after the singing had stopped. He even managed to give the impression he might burst with Masonic fervour in his handling of Mozart's Maurerfreude (Mason's Joy), but the real weight and diversity of the programme came in the Mörike settings of the second half.
There's not much to be said, really, about Holzmair and Cooper's Wolf, save that it showed two performers at the peak of their art, with that essential but all-too-rare balance of independence and co-operation between keyboard and voice, and working in repertoire that finds an utterly inimitable composer at a similar peak.
