Music

Jazz Highlights – October 13th-19th

Jeff Ballard Duos with Kate Ellis/Stephen James Smith/Inni-K; Bowie to Buckley: a World aPärt; No Borders Quartet: GoGo Penguin

Hip young UK trio GoGo Penguin clearly know their audience

Cormac Larkin's face
Cormac Larkin
Fri Oct 13 2017 - 05:00

Friday 13th

DUAL PURPOSE

Jeff Ballard Duos with Kate Ellis/Stephen James Smith/Inni-K

Jeff Ballard is a consummate improviser, a restlessly creative musical force, willing and able to adapt his grooves to any situation

Fumbally Stables, Dublin, 7pm & 9pm, note.ie (also Saturday)

Star US drummer Jeff Ballard concludes his Dublin duo encounters tonight and tomorrow night, searching for common ground in a series of one-off collaborations: with avant-garde cellist Kate Ellis, spoken word artist Stephen James Smith, and indy folkster Eithne Ní Chatháin, aka Inni-K. Ballard – best known as the propulsive force in pianist Brad Mehldau’s trio – is a consummate improviser, a restlessly creative musical force, willing and able to adapt his grooves to any situation. It will be fascinating to see him respond to these three very different local collaborators. Cormac Larkin

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Monday 16th

ZIGGY PLAYS GUITAR

Bowie to Buckley: a World aPärt

Sugar Club, Dublin, 8.30pm, €17, thesugarclub.com

The global music community continues to mourn the passing of David Bowie, but how many tributes involve a jazz guitarist, a long-standing member of Bowie’s band from Clontarf, four cellos and the music of Arvo Pärt? Dublin favourite Hugh Buckley is the driving force behind this unusual tribute to the thin white Duke, with performances from the guitarist’s front-rank quintet with saxophonist Michael Buckley and pianist Phil Ware, Dublin-born Bowie side-man Gerry Leonard and the massed cellos of Cello Ireland. Just for one day. CL

Wed 18th October

MELTING POT

No Borders Quartet

Arthurs, Dublin, 9pm, €10, arthurspub.ie (also Thursday, The Sofa Sessions at Billy Brynes, Kilkenny)

Jazz musicians love showing everyone else the way to real European integration. Dublin guitarist Chris Guilfoyle and Berlin pianist Marie Kruttli, two musicians at the glowing edge of the continent’s creative music scene, met at the University of Lausanne and have been plotting acts of musical promiscuity ever since. No Borders will see these two rising stars perform both in Ireland and Germany, exchanging ideas, exploring each other’s music, and matching up to a local rhythm section. For the Irish leg, they have drafted two of the most promising talents on the Dublin scene, bassist Barry Donohue and drummer Brendan Doherty. If you want to hear where European creativity is headed, check No Borders out. CL

PENGUINS OFF BALANCE

GoGo Penguin

Sugar Club, Dublin, 8pm, €22.50, thesugarclub.com (also Thursday)

Godfrey Reggio's 1982 cult classic Koyaanisqatsi, produced by Francis Ford Coppola, remains almost unique as a mainstream film, an art movie polemic masquerading as entertainment, a mesmerizing sequence of images of our planet in all its precariousness (the title is a Hopi word meaning "life out of balance"). But perhaps even more striking than the images was Philip Glass's masterly score, which invested the images with an urgency that stopped a generation of stoners in their tracks. So replacing it with a live piano trio performance is a big risk, but hip young UK trio GoGo Penguin clearly know their audience: an extra date has been added to the original Thursday show due to demand. CL