Music for Clarinet & String Trio (1996) - Ronan Guilfoyle

Phantom City (1997) - Ronan Guilfoyle

The first work presented by Ronan Guilfoyle in the Lane Gallery on Sunday attempts to bridge the gap between so-called classical music and jazz. The parts for strings, played by the Hibernia String Trio, are written out, but the clarinet part, played by John Ruocco, is mostly improvised. In this example of cross-over music, the strings provide a background, often quite exotic in sound, to the peregrinations of the clarinet, which in the improvised solo in the final movement showed that it could dispense with the background and be all the better for its absence. The Hibernia String Trio were playing well, but the minimalist flavour of their parts did not use their talents to best advantage.

Phantom City was played by Dermot Dunne (accordion), John Ruocco (soprano saxophone), Ronan Guilfoyle (bass guitar) and Conor Guilfoyle (percussion). More obviously inspired by jazz, it evoked memories of the jazz clubs of the past, though in my opinion the amplified bass guitar is a poor substitute for the double bass. In this combination the accordion was the classical instrument with the written part and the other three players the ones who did the improvising.

Here again it was the individual riffs that best held the attention; when all four players joined in, the ensemble sounded like a cinema-organ going hell for leather. It was great fun, if one wasn't put off by the somewhat blurred mixture of sounds and the generally high decibel level.