Calexico, Whelans, DublinTumbleweed and endless parched horizons seemed an awfully long way from the sweat and jostling rhythms of Wexford Street on Saturday.
Yet somehow Tucson, Arizona, and Dublin, Ireland, merged longitude and latitude long enough to let Calexico, the offspring of Joey Burns and John Convertino, cause quite a commotion among those brave enough to battle the elements and jettison their PlayStations for the delights of a little Latin Tex-Mex.
Calexico had already taken Dublin by stealth long before their arrival on stage. They packed the house an hour before a guitar string was plucked or a lap steel was caressed. And the beauty of all this unsolicited adoration was that the band rewarded the crowd with the kind of daring brilliance that's the reserve of the truly great.
A glance at the instrument line-up was enough to signal a night unlike most of the drums 'n' bass fodder on Dublin's live menu: trumpet, double bass, lap steel and vibes are hardly the stuff of your average colour-by-numbers three-chords-and-the- truth outfits. Burns's louche bass lines were about as laid back as a Tom Waits bartender at 3am, while Paul Niehaus's lap steel cosied up alongside Martin Wenk's trumpet and made us all believe we were the bastard offspring of an illicit liaison between Sergio Leone and The Mavericks.
Siobhán Long
Sadhbh Dennedy, Setanta Choir
Dundalk IT
The Setanta Choir from Dundalk celebrated its 25th anniversary with a Silver Jubilee Prom Concert given in the presence of President Mary McAleese.
It included the premiere of a specially commissioned work by Eibhlis Farrell.
Farrell, the institute's head of humanities, is from Rostrevor, in Co Down, and grew up "looking across Carlingford Lough to the Cooley Mountains".
She says she felt an affinity with the world of the Táin Bó Cuailgne, which features Cooley as home of the famous brown bull and from which the choir took its name - Cúchulainn was known as Setanta in childhood.
In her five-movement Setanta, for soprano soloist, choir and orchestra, Farrell has adopted a well-worn modal technique to evoke a generalised atmosphere of antiquity, adding a sometimes declamatory solo voice and touches of brass fanfare and drumming. She also seems to have narrowed her musical and expressive range to take account of the limitations of amateur performers.
The exploits of the Táin are heroic and often bloody. But although Farrell's third movement deals with the daemonic Morrígan and the fourth repeatedly sets the line, "I see red, I see crimson, I see blood," the music steadfastly refuses to offer a sharply focused reflection of these associations. It's as if the composer had been thinking of incidental music and created a generalised evocation over which stronger, more specific images or statements could be projected.
The choir, which is directed by Úna Murphy, handled itself well, though it sounded at its best later on in the evening, in the Hallelujah from Beethoven's Christ on the Mount of Olives. Soprano soloist Sadhbh Dennedy sounded attractively youthful of tone but wavered slightly in delivery.
Proinnsías Ó Duinn and the members of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra brought a sense of resolve to the performance and achieved an even stronger sense of purpose in the selection of light music that made up the rest of the programme, Irish-flavoured in the first half - Leroy Anderson and AJ Potter - and far and wide ranging in the second.
-Michael Dervan
Ray Henry & The Pendulum
JJ Smyths, Dublin
Henry & the Pengulum is not a group but an idea and, in a week that saw bassist and composer Ronan Guilfoyle become the first jazz musician accepted into Aosdána, it proved on Sunday night to be a spectacularly successful one. The initial fruits of a collaboration between the Improvised Music Company and Henry's, Edinburgh's premier jazz club, it brought together Guilfoyle, tenor Michael Buckley, Australian pianist and composer Andrea Keller, trumpeter Colin Steele and drummer Tom Bancroft.
From pick-up groups the norm is reliance for repertoire on the common ground of standards, with strings of solos to follow; the hopes are that some of the results will be interesting and the boring bits kept to a minimum. However, except for Guilfoyle's brilliant, tricky arrangement of Parker's Ah-Leu-Cha and a questing, highly imaginative, freewheeling approach to Softly As In A Morning Sunrise, this quintet used original material by the band members.
And the originals offered more than an excuse for blowing. The quirky, boundary-stretching Captain Fisher and a gorgeous modal piece, That Day, both by Keller, were compositions with definite character, as were Steele's take on the blues, Cheeky Wee Monkey, a calypso-like Five For Jimmy Deuchar (Deuchar was one of Scotland's greatest trumpeters), Bancroft's amazing tribute to Ornette Coleman, OC, and The Piano Is A Dark Horse.
The result of using material with such strong compositional character must have affected the way the musicians approached their solos.
There were no signs of ego or self-indulgence; everyone was focused and responsive and within the well-structured but not constricted musical context the improvisatory elements were constantly satisfying, interesting and surprising.
In a quintet where everyone contributed so tellingly, it's perhaps invidious to single out one musician, but Buckley was inspiring, his solo on The Piano Is A Dark Horse an extraordinary improvisation, beautifully developed, inventive and utterly committed.
But the abiding impression of a marvellous concert was that this was one of those magical jazz nights when everything gelled.
-Ray Comiskey
Gafa
Theatre Space, Dublin
There was a full house at 10.30 on a wet and windy Monday morning for a Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe play about addiction, violence and family misfortunes. Last year alone, this 130-seater off Henry Street hosted 23 Irish-language productions and all were packed out. Admittedly on this occasion, most of the audience was made up of school students with an excerpt from Gafa, by Ré Ó Laighléis, on their course.
Eoin (Seán Maitiú Ó Carraidh) is a young addict who lies to his parents. They bring him for counselling, but it is too late. He is in hock to a local dealer and is also linked to another young man, Cillian (Darach Ó Tuairisg), who is trying to expand his own drugs business.
Against a background of menace, dealing and his descent into hell, Eoin's family has a parallel drama. His father has been spotted by Cillian in a nightclub with another woman. Blackmailing his father, stealing from his mother, under threat from drug dealers, Eoin presents a figure for whom redemption seems extremely unlikely.
The scenes of family strife are laboured, however, considering the problems that have surfaced. Pleading with a son to do his homework in such a situation seems a bit far-fetched.
There are excellent performances from Mairéad Ní Chonghaile as the mother and from Seán Maitiú Ó Carraidh, who is convincing as the addict. Breandán Ó Muirí is well cast as the shifty father. The bad guys (Antoin O Loinneacháin, Alastair Mac Aindreasa and Marcus Seoighe) bring a sense of evil that is matched by well-choreographed stage violence.
Director Darach Mac Con Iomaire does well to bring a complicated piece to the stage - a simpler set with less moving of furniture might have made for better pacing.
-Mairéad Ní Nuadháin
Stars at Noon
Triskel Arts Centre, Cork
The Five artists gathered for Stars at Noon are united by a fractured irony and idiosyncratic invention.
Helen Sharp uses opticians' equipment hooked up to a control panel that allows the viewer to activate lights and dials, revealing jumbled words that communicate the artist's interest in perception and semantics. Deirdre McKenna's work is less convoluted in its ambition, as a wooden platform sloping from floor to roof is covered with templates of deciduous trees. A red floor spot marks the best point for experiencing the rejigged perspective.
Clive Murphy's wall painting of a butterfly mimics Far Eastern kitsch and the flaws in registering colour typical of mass-produced artefacts. Michael O'Boyle paints onto wooden pallets, creating small squares of colour. Resting on the surface are "splashes" of aluminium, coagulating like quicksilver and giving a surreal edge.
Ursula Burke's video projection Josie is a chronicle of her history. It comes across as being the least tactile contribution within the exhibition, more concerned with an internalised subject than the more playful explorations of the other artists.
- Runs until February 27th
-Mark Ewart
