Irish Times critics review A Few White Lies at Andrews Lane Studio, Dublin and Justin Timberlake at the Point and two performances at the National Concert Hall: the Kenny Werner Trio and the Dublin Chamber Choir. Also reviewed are Bang On A Can All-Stars at Vicar Street and Lesley Garrett with Northern Sinfonia and Tolga Kashif at The Helix and Simon Trpceski at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast
Justin Timberlake at the Point, Dublin
Justin Timberlake may have left his 'N Sync bandmates behind as he launched himself into the pop firmament via the sounds of R&B and hip hop, but there's little chance of his being lonely. As a solo artist buoyed by an unhealthy amount of hype, he's carrying the can for a good show - but he has the help of a 14-member group (plus seven dancers), including a three-piece brass section, four singers and the slickest ensemble that has backed a white boy since Elvis pulled down houses in Las Vegas and in whose hands Timberlake's sparse 1980s studio sound is thoroughly beefed up.
Like Presley, Timberlake has appropriated everything great and good about contemporary black urban music in the US and made it his own. Drawing from Justified, his multi-platinum album, the set had just enough hit singles - barely audible beneath the high-pitched din of the frenzied audience - littered throughout less-well-known songs to keep the excitement levels up.
And it only got louder for the show's big set piece. As the drum riser and DJ box floated from their moorings towards the front of the stage, Timberlake, perched on the end of a crane that swung out 30 feet over the audience, began an extraordinary 10-minute rhythmic jam that mingled his considerable talent as a human beat box with the explosive grooves of his drummer and the fearsome scratching of his DJ.
At about 75 minutes, the set was a little brief for the ticket price but was probably all it could be, as Timberlake has only that one album under his belt. In fact, the brevity added to the impact of a show that turned out to be far better than the songs. And it's unlikely you'll get any complaints from the thousands who began the night on the verge of hysteria and ended it elated, extremely hoarse and thoroughly justified.
John Lane
Kenny Werner Trio at the
John Field Room, NCH, Dublin
The spring season of Trio 3, the Jazz Architects-Improvised Music Company series illustrating the scope of the piano-trio format in jazz, finished with a splendid concert by the US pianist's trio. This is a working group, and it showed. Bassist Johannes Weidenmuller and drummer Ari Hoenig have been with Werner for three years, in the process reaching a remarkable level of mutual understanding.
Their cohesion enabled them to impress even when, as in the opening set, the creative juices weren't flowing quite as consistently as might have been expected. It also has its dangers; there were touches of self-indulgence on the overlong Trio Invitation, where much of the interest was primarily rhythmic, while Dolphin Dance, though full of surprises, metamorphosed into a kind of medley and lost focus somewhat.
But there were, too, things to savour, including a teasingly oblique, subtly reharmonised Stella By Starlight, a strikingly rethought All The Things You Are and a lovely ballad, Peace. And the first set showed what a remarkable drummer Hoenig is and how important Weidenmuller is in grounding the interchanges of piano and drums.
Good though the first set was, the second took the music to a higher level. Werner's remained the dominant voice, but the interplay between him and Hoenig was extraordinary at times; changes of tempo, time signature and dynamics were carried off with immense aplomb and musicality. And the trio came back for Amonkst, a tribute to Thelonious Monk, which was a joyous summation of this wonderful group's capabilities. The series resumes in the autumn. It has a lot to live up to.
Ray Comiskey
A Few White Lies at Andrews Lane Studio, Dublin
Frank Shouldice's new play is essentially a slight melodrama in which marital infidelity is the driving cliché. Two couples engage in some cross- fertilisation in which the wives don't know what the husbands are up to and vice versa. A less sophisticated younger couple are made to listen and learn.
Executive Raymond drops the ball only once with Audrey, wife of Michael. He is not the vile traitor he believes himself to be; after all, drink was involved, and his own wife, Jane, is in a running affair with businessman Michael. Audrey's live-in niece Elaine has a new boyfriend in Barry, a professional soccer player, and they are about to become engaged.
Raymond is tormented by the shallows in which his marriage is foundering, and not only because of errant sex. Jane vacillates, knowing the buzz has gone out of their relationship. They seem to have lost affection for, and even knowledge of, each other. Michael and Audrey are made of less sensitive stuff and do not allow their mutual dislike to cause major problems in their lives. There is still fun to be had.
It all comes to a head at a party thrown by Michael and Audrey for their friends' eighth anniversary. They drink their heads off, Raymond gives the game away and a downbeat ending arrives to terminate the proceedings.
The author, who also directs - a mistake - compounds an inadequate dramatic situation with dialogue that rarely rings true and undermines his characters. It is studded with wince-making overwriting, most obvious during the party's attempted climax. The contrived situation should be of anger and revelation, but the words provoke the laughter of embarrassment. The very competent actors (Robert McDowell, Maria Tecce, Alan King, Emma McIvor, David Mitchell and Rachel Hanna) do what they can with a thankless task.
Runs until June 7th
Gerry Colgan
Dublin Chamber Choir at the John Field Room, NCH, Dublin
English-speaking choirs tend to be more at home with German music than with French. That was certainly the case when the choir and conductor Peter Barley presented this concert of French and German music.
In the first half the choir did better with settings of Latin texts than with French. So Poulenc's Salve Regina and Exultate Deo were more strongly shaped in music and words than his Quatre Petites Prières, and Debussy's Dieu! Qu'il La Fait Bon Regarder was less focused than Messiaen's O Sacrum Convivium.
The most complete performances were of Mendelssohn and Bruckner. Mendelssohn's German-language settings had a certainty the French music touched only occasionally, and Bruckner's Latin motets on the whole received the best performances.
Dublin Chamber Choir is not even a year old, and this was its first concert since Barley took over as musical director. The singers have some way to go before they fulfil their promise of singing a "versatile repertoire of classical music to a high standard of excellence". One was almost always too aware of struggles with technique. Barley, who is choirmaster at St Patrick's Cathedral, could be just the man to help.
Martin Adams
Bang On A Can All-Stars at Vicar Street, Dublin
"Support live music." So cried Evan Ziporyn, the clarinettist from Bang On A Can All-Stars, when a technical fault cut Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint short by a minute or so. A pity, for Mark Stewart's playing of the solo part had been superb.
Ziporyn's quip was perfect. Familiarity with recordings by this sextet of bass, percussion, piano, electric guitar and cello cannot prepare you for their impact in concert.
Their mix of rock-band, jazz group, electro-acoustic instrumentalists and classical chamber ensemble, and the precision and panache of their playing, have inspired a whole generation of composers and performers, including Ireland's Crash Ensemble.
The BOAC All-Stars concert on Friday night in Vicar Street was dominated by music written for them. Ziporyn's arrangements of four of Nancarrow's works for piano are an extraordinary test of precise cross-rhythms. Julia Wolfe's Big, Beautiful, Dark and Scary lives up to its name. Michael Gordon's I Buried Paul begins with innocuous repetitions and builds up to amazing tension. Tan Dun's Concerto for Six is a rip-roaring sequence of displays by individual and group. Brian Eno's Music for Airports was presented in an arrangement made in consultation with the composer.
The concert included a work commissioned from Ireland's Donnacha Dennehy (one of the founders of the Crash Ensemble) by WNYC Radio New York for the BOAC All-Stars. Streetwalker includes this composer's characteristic mixture of urban sounds, and tight, multi-layered rhythms. But there is nothing routine about it. Subtle and unusual pitch-bending techniques intersect with, and help to trigger some of the most kaleidoscopic sounds of this concert. The sense of purpose gives special potency to surprising twists and turns in a work which stood up with the best of those in the concert. And what a concert.
Martin Adams
Simon Trpceski - piano at the NTL Studio, Waterfront Hall, Belfast
Stravinsky - Four Studies Op 7. Scriabin - Sonata No. 5.
Rachmaninov - Sonata No. 2.
One of the hallmarks of a really outstanding pianist is the ability to produce an individual sound from the instrument. This recital, the last in the current series of free BBC one hour recitals in the NTL Studio in Belfast, was remarkable for the sound the young Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski drew from the piano, a full golden tone which could encompass a dynamic range from a velvety whisper to a sonorous fortissimo without losing its quality. But of course it takes real virtuosity to play a programme like this without a sense of strain. Some years ago a visiting pianist made heavy weather of Scriabin's one-movement Fifth Sonata, but in Trpceski's hands the flickering motifs danced up and down the keyboard with something like ease.
He sailed through Stravinsky's early Four Studies, exercises in rhythmic complexity which date from his period of study with Rimsky-Korsakov, not only negotiating their perverse difficulties but also managing to make music out of them.
It was the musicianship to which Trpceski's technique is devoted that was most impressive, the sensitivity and imagination with which the different strands of the Rachmaninov sonata were voiced, the ability to project feeling, and the intellectual grasp on a piece which can sound effusive.
We were treated to three encores - March from The Seasons by Tchaikovsky, the Bach-Siloti Prelude in E Minor, and Mikhail Pletnev's witty arrangement of the Chinese Dance from The Nutcracker - the last thrown off with good humour and style.
Dermot Gault
Lesley Garrett/Northern Sinfonia, Tolga Kashif at The Helix, Dublin
Lesley Garrett is an engaging and versatile performer who is as vocally assured belting out pop anthems as she is in baroque opera. Here, she performed an eclectic selection of mainly British and French songs, whose sources ranged from Purcell to Sting, by way of Parry, Fauré, Vaughan Williams, Canteloube, Britten, Simon and Garfunkel and The Beatles.
There was also an energetic instrumental interlude for uilleann pipes and bodhrán by two soloists from the excellent Northern Sinfonia. Tolga Kashif directed the performance from a keyboard that served as piano and harpsichord, as well as providing some eerie electronic effects. He was also responsible for most of the musical arrangements. Many of these were either densely orchestrated or rhythmically driven, sometimes both, forcing the singer to avail of every decibel on offer from the sound controller. Which was all very well in the noisy ballads; but it was rather bizarre to hear pieces such as Purcell's If Music Be the Food of Love and a couple of Canteloube's Auvergne songs gently vocalised into a large and very-close-to-the-mouth microphone. And there was one real horror; a rendering of Fauré's delicate Après un rêve that was strait-jacketed and bullied along by a relentless drum-orientated strict tempo.
Garrett interspersed her vocal contributions with lots of cheerful chat that covered programme notes, anecdotes and multiple references to her north of England roots.
John Allen
