Jazz 2005: By any measure, 2005 has been a good year for jazz here. The first flowering of perhaps the best educated, most technically equipped generation of young Irish musicians is just beginning to make its presence felt.

And there are developments with that which should see the whole jazz scene here reaching some kind of critical mass over the next four or five years. Whether it will go further depends on, among other things, resources and who controls them, but there is no doubt that these are exciting, if perennially precarious, times for Irish jazz musicians, especially the younger generation.

During the past year, they - and the jazz audience - have also had the chance to hear outstanding international musicians in a quantity and variety seldom, if ever, equalled.

Excellent programming by the Improvised Music Company (IMC), Note Productions (both, incidentally, part-funded by the Arts Council) and by the Guinness Jazz Festival have had a huge impact on what we have heard. And a significant proportion of jazz visitors has been European, reflecting what is already being recognised as a shift in creative focus from the home of the music, America, to the Old World.

That was caught particularly well by the IMC's series featuring artists from Germany's great ECM label. This brought in the Kenny Wheeler Big Band (Wheeler is Canadian, but has lived in Europe for decades and his band is filled with the cream of Europeans), Tomasz Stanko (Poland), Enrico Rava (Italy), Louis Sclavis (France), Tord Gustavsen and Jon Balke (Norway). Charles Lloyd was the sole New World representation in the series, which included folk, classical and religious music elements from Savina Yannatou (Greece), Vassilis Tsabropoulos (Greece) and Anja Lechner (Germany).

The IMC also brought in the Esbjorn Svensson Trio from Sweden and assisted in the programming of the still-improving Bray Jazz Festival, securing Henri Texier (France) and the remarkable American singer René Marie. And it continued its European pursuits with a series of exceptional piano concerts at Farmleigh, featuring Bojan Zulfikarpasic (Serbia), Stefano Bollani (Italy), Huw Warren (England) with John Parricelli (Wales), and Greg Burk (US) with Michael Buckley (Ireland). Farmleigh was also the venue for an open-air jazz Sunday with, among other things, Colin Steele's band from Scotland.

The IMC didn't neglect the downtown New York scene, where some of the most exciting jazz in the US can be heard. Both Chris Potter and Dave Binney headed powerhouse bands; Binney's Welcome To Life in particular had a roll-call of New York's finest: Mark Turner, Adam Rogers, Uri Caine, Scott Colley and Brian Blade. And mention must be made of John Mardirosian of Walton's for bringing in the legendary American saxophonist Wayne Shorter earlier in the year.

Note tended to rely more on America for jazz programming, bringing in Fly (Mark Turner-Jeff Ballard-Larry Grenadier), Marc Copland-Gary Peacock, Jason Moran's Bandwagon, The Bad Plus and the US-based Avishai Cohen. But it finished the year with three examples of new Norwegian music: Arve Henriksen, Supersilent and Arild Andersen's Electra group.

One negative feature of this was the cramming of too many events into too short a time span in October-November, when fans had to find the money for eight major visiting attractions in November alone - and that just after the Guinness Jazz Festival. It's bad programming and does little to serve the audience for the music.

A vintage Guinness Jazz Festival did rely on headline American acts for its main venues, the Opera House and the Everyman: Charlie Haden's wonderful Liberation Music Orchestra, Chick Corea recalling his Castilian musical heritage, Roy Haynes, McCoy Tyner, the Dave Holland Quintet (okay, he's English, but his band's American).

But it also showed more concern with Europe, bringing in Richard Galliano and Philippe Catherine from France, and turning the Triskel into a mini-festival of European jazz.

That venue housed a particularly strong programme, with Enrico Pieranunzi/ Gabriele Mirabassi/Ronan Guilfoyle, Simon Nabatov/Ernst Reijseger/Michael Sarin, Mike Nielsen/Benjamin Dwyer, Colin Steele/Brian Kellock, and Terje Rypdal/Kjetil Bjornstad - a geographic spread from Russia to the Mediterranean, and points north to Scandinavia and west to Britain and Ireland.

Louis Stewart and Richie Buckley were featured with the Americans, Kirk Lightsey and Jon Faddis, respectively, and New York based David Berkman had his own group there.

While this represents a growing perception among promoters of an enormous cultural shift that has been developing in jazz for some time, what lies behind it has equally significant implications for jazz here; in education, in resources, including state support and infrastructure; and in the music's relationship with other idioms. It's too large a topic to pursue in this piece, but its importance is underlined by some developments on the local scene.

Newpark Music Centre, which formally joined the Berklee International Network (BIN) this year (Berklee is the renowned Boston music school with associates in the BIN all over the globe) announced the inception of a BA in Jazz Performance (BAJP). While degrees in jazz performance are common in Europe and America, this is the first non-classical undergraduate music performance course here. The far-reaching, four-year course provides participants with the skills to operate in a wide area of contemporary music, not just jazz.

While not all the younger musicians have gone through Newpark, it's fair to say that its influence is reflected in composer/arranger Dylan Rynhart's highly original Fuzzy Logic group. It's also evident in the nine-piece Intro 05, an initiative developed by the IMC and Newpark, which brought Berklee guitarist Rick Peckham over to guide the players involved.

Both groups featured the cream of young jazz musicians here and Intro 05 drew attention to the work of two more very promising young composer/arrangers, Jonathan O'Donovan and Dan Jacobsen.

Which, in a sense, is where we came in. But where do they - and jazz in this country - go from here? Experience has taught those involved in the music not to hold their breath, even after an exceptional year like the one just ending. There is more, much more, to be said on the subject.

Series concludes

Highs

Concerts by Arild Andersen, Arve Henriksen, Tord Gustavsen and Charlie Haden

Lows

The programming which saw eight concerts by promoters crammed into the month of November