This year's ESB Dublin Jazz Week wasn't quite a game of two halves; the final four days generally maintained the high standards of the rest of the week, although they offered more temptation to wave a yellow card or two.
Take Sunday night at the National Concert Hall, the orchestral climax to the week, where jazz writers, soloists and a rhythm section joined an augmented RTE Concert Orchestra. On the positive side were Ronan Guilfoyle's delightful setting of Kurt Weil's Speak Low in an unusual time signature, and his new composition, Parabola. Each allowed singer Kristina Fuchs to display her musical intelligence, with tenor saxophonist Michael Buckley and guitarist Mike Nielsen effectively featured on the first and second respectively.
There were also fine orchestral settings from Manny Albam with The Peacocks and Nostalgico and from Vince Mendoza with Ambivalence. They gave the evening's main soloist, tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, a chance to show why he is so highly regarded.
But while Speak Low and Pa- rabola addressed themselves more directly and effectively to the needs of jazz, it could be argued that Albam and Mendoza's work belongs to a well-established if highly skilled orchestral tradition which has mostly been on its margins - although Florian Ross and others have lately shown ways around the somewhat compromised work that characterise that tradition.
Disappointing, however, were Jim McNeely's Crunch Time and his four-movement concerto, 23/ 67, which along with Florian Ross's Petit Paul aroused the greatest interest. Part of the problem was the appalling sound those sitting near the front have to endure at the NCH, where detail was lost in the densely structured writing favoured by both composers; further back, the sound is considerably better. But despite brilliant playing by Lovano, a fine slow movement to the concerto and a beautifully written climax to the fourth, the writing seemed overstated and the orchestral resources unbalanced.
In contrast, the Jazz Week's specially commissioned suite, Octagon, by Florian Ross, was a total joy. Premiered on Friday at Vicar Street with tenor saxophonist Michael Buckley spotlighted in front of a rhythm section and string quartet, it was a marvellous blending of the elements involved. Ross, on piano, led the rhythm section, completed by Dietmar Fuhr (bass) and Kieran Phillips (drums), with the strings led by Alan Smale (violin) and including Gillian Williams (violin), Fiona Griffiths (viola) and William Butt (cello).
Ross's considerable gifts as a composer were much more in evidence here, skilfully building from often the simplest of motifs, and allowing both the space for improvisation, yet subtly ordering the musical discourse. With Buckley in brilliant form, producing some of the most compellingly disciplined and inventive playing I've heard from him, and strings and rhythm section responsive, this was rather special.
As was singer Claudia Acuna on the same bill. Despite the fact that she had a different rhythm section from that on her debut CD, Wind From The South, she turned in a performance of considerable charm and professionalism. Her programme, all drawn from the CD, used the same arrangements, played with impressive aplomb by Luis Perdomo (piano), Dwayne Burno (bass) and Eric MacPherson (drums).
IF this festival has pointed up anything, it is some of the qualities that, perhaps, distinguish European and American approaches to jazz from each other. Apart from the fact that they may be more likely to absorb classical influences and have a richer, more diverse folk tradition to draw on than their Stateside counterparts, contemporary European jazz musicians seem to have a more flexible attitude to maintaining a steady pulse; it's not that they don't swing when they feel like it - it's that they don't seem to feel the need to do so all the time.
That there is a place for both in jazz was clear at Vicar Street on Saturday night, when a high-class double bill effectively demonstrated the dual approaches. From Finland the Jarmo Savolainen Trio - Savolainen (piano), Uffe Krokfors (bass) and Markku Ounaskari (drums) - with the Dutch trumpeter, Eric Vloeimans, illustrated just how loosely they dealt with improvisation, handling time and changes with a freedom that could have been chaotic but wasn't.
Savolainen announced just one piece, At Last, but the material, all original, was drawn from their latest CD. It included the title track, Grand Style, a gorgeous ballad, Non-Stop Home, as well as - if I have identified them correctly - Colored World, The Weasel and Catch Up. It's a marvellous band, thoughtful and flexible, yet highly controlled and saved from the merely cerebral by their mutual responsiveness and by the passion and humanity of Vloeimans, surely a great trumpeter in the making. Original and daring, he didn't play a cliche the whole evening.
Neither did Joe Lovano, whose playing is quintessentially American. That too much may be made of differences is emphasised by the fact that he was superbly backed by three Europeans - Mike Nielsen, Ronan Guilfoyle (bass) and Conor Guilfoyle (drums) - for the second part of Saturday's concert. But from the opening up-tempo Topsy Turvy, this was the get-in-the-grooveand-grab-'em approach led by a man who likes to swing.
Encouraged by the propulsive rhythm section behind him, in which Conor Guilfoyle was outstanding, that's what he did. The group established euphoric grooves on Eternal Joy, Charlie Chan and Four On The Floor, all up-tempo pieces on which he stretched out at considerable length. It was, however, somewhat relentless; the ballads - Sanctuary Park, If You Could See Me Now and Chelsea Bridge - allowed one a better chance to appreciate the originality of his phrasing.
The past was heavily revisited at the Hugh Lane Gallery on Sunday, with Iain Ballamy and Stian Carstensen. Ballamy is one of the finest young tenor saxophonists in Britain, Carstensen a virtuoso accordionist from Norway. Their duets, all on standards, were beautifully played, ingratiatingly clever, witty, well-mannered and just a trifle boring - an opinion not shared by the rapturous audience.
But it would be a pity to end on a negative note, however slightly so. In its musical quality, variety and organisation, this festival has been the best so far. Festival director, Gerry Godley, has raised the standard considerably above the positive achievements of the first two years and in so doing has set himself a hard act to follow next year.
