MAINSTREAM jazz hardly comes better than this. Last night's Dublin Jazz Society concert was a feel-good time for aficionados of the righteous mainstream message, placing, as it did, the matured in-the-cask tenor of Teddy Edwards in front of a vintage rhythm section for this kind of jazz in Jim Doherty (piano), Dave Fleming (bass) and the nonpareil John Wadham (drums).

It could have been cosy; a coast over the familiar territory of The Great American Songbook. But in this case familiarity hardly bred contempt; Edwards, confident his, colleagues were up to it, sprang surprises on them like the unaccompanied tenor intro to Stella By Starlight, with its decidedly oblique thematic references, or - more simply - just taking Oh, Lady Be Good! medium slow instead of medium up, thereby completely altering the character of the performance and, significantly, his own and the trio's response to the slower than usual tempo.

To be fair, it wasn't always a marriage of true minds; Edwards's altered changes on Misty, for instance, caused some differences of harmonic opinion with the trio. But this is a minor (no pun intended) cavil on a marvellous exposition of the truth that freshness is, ultimately, somehow independent of style. Because Edwards - pragmatically constrained by working with musicians he hasn't played with for years - chose common ground standards and the blues, secure in the knowledge that most of the harmonic liberties he might take with them would be instantly reacted to, he found himself in the kind of ambience where inspirations was likely to be mutual.

And, for the most part, it was. With the trio in splendid form, they did justice to It Could Happen To You and - somewhat less so - to What Is This Thing Called Love - before really hitting a collective groove, sustained for the rest of the evening, on Pennies From Heaven.

That was one of the best performances in a night which included such gems as the rubato theme statement by tenor and piano, of Tenderly, with tenor playing that can only be described as great, and performances as disparate as the opening It Could Happen To You, as Edwards enfiladed the medium-slow theme with swoops and smears, or simply relaxed with the fun-filled blues changes of Symphony On Central. It was a pleasure throughout.