Ones that didn't get away

It's the fate of all annual events, especially the successful ones such as the Guinness Jazz Festival in Cork, to be in constant competition with their own history. And if this year's event didn't equal the special aura of Cork at its best, neither did it make you feel like slitting your wrists, writes Ray Comiskey

The impression that this wasn't going to be a vintage year like its immediate predecessor - when Jan Garbarek and Abdullah Ibrahim enchanted the Everyman Palace audience with superb music and even great names such as Carla Bley and Charles Lloyd were overshadowed - was reinforced before the programme got underway by late cancellations. Two headliners were lost this way: the great alto saxophonist, Charlie Mariano, is seriously ill, and the celebrated tenor, Michael Brecker, has a back injury. But there was enough quality scattered throughout the programme to raise hopes which were as often realised as dashed.

This was in a sense epitomised by the most significant concert of the festival, the premiere of bassist Ronan Guilfoyle's specially commissioned celebration of the event, a seven- movement piece called South Facing. Making its début at the Everyman, this was a hugely impressive work distinguished by Guilfoyle's canny use of the resources offered by an international septet of jazz musicians of the highest calibre.

Relying heavily on a complex, contrapuntal score which mixed the written and the improvised, the harmonically rooted with the free, it was a vivid work which got better and better as it progressed. Guilfoyle concluded it with two movements which caught both the festival's history and its constantly changing present: a beautiful, affecting piece, Departed, acknowledging the great players who have graced Cork over the years and dedicated to one of our own, the late drummer, John Wadham, and a joyous All's Well, almost Caribbean in its verve, invention, zest and variety.

It was executed with awesome skill by the group, who made light of the music's complexity and, in the way they handled ensemble and solo parts, energised and enlivened the score. It would be invidious to single out anyone for particular attention, because the standard set by drummer Tom Rainey, altoist Dave Binney and violinist Mark Feldman, all from the US, and tenor and soprano Julian Arguelles, trombonist Nils Wogram, pianist Mario Laginha and the composer, all from Europe, was stunning.

There is, however, a downside. The festival's artistic director, Jack McGouran, who commissioned the piece, confirmed that the intention was for Lyric FM to record the concert for later broadcast. That didn't happen and before there is a rush to judgment on it, we are entitled to an explanation from Lyric as to why an opportunity to record such a work, performed by a gifted ensemble, assembled so painstakingly and, no doubt, expensively, was missed.

There were other negatives. Trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard, sharing the bill with the Guilfoyle group, had a new and mostly little-known band which seemed to function as a backdrop to his exhibitionistic playing. Coming from someone of his calibre it was a disappointment.

In contrast, drummer Louis Hayes's Cannonball Adderley Tribute Band, a late replacement for Brecker, had a young trumpeter who was unshowy but effective in everything he did. Jeremy Pelt was part of a bop quintet which, besides the semi-legendary Hayes, offered an opportunity to hear another blast from the past, the altoist James Spaulding, who made some cutting edge albums with Freddie Hubbard in the 1960s.

The brilliant bassist, Avishai Cohen, led an excellent trio completed by pianist and melodica player Sam Bar-Sheshet and drummer Mark Giuliana at the Everyman. Rapturously received, their simple, repetitive and ingratiatingly accessible music was a kind of jazz lite. If it was alcohol you could have drunk gallons and still been able to pass a breathalyser test.

Likewise, the anticipated pleasure of hearing Chicago singer/pianist Patricia Barber, appearing in Cork for the first time, failed to materialise. In her afternoon Everyman concert she seemed all too concerned to get it over and be done with as soon as possible. Whatever it was that laddered her tights and soured the bran flakes, her concert was cold and perfunctory, and a programme best summed up as dealing with life, love and the pursuit of unhappiness was the musical equivalent of a limp, clammy handshake.

Happily, this was immediately followed by one of the weekend's best concerts. Vibes player Joe Locke unveiled his savoury quartet, 4 Walls Of Freedom, with bassist Ed Howard, drummer Gary Novak and the marvellous Tommy Smith, replacing the group's original tenor, Bob Berg, killed a little over a year ago in an accident.

Their vivacious, subtle and beautiful performance rapidly dispelled the memory of what had gone before. Locke, who uses four mallets, seems beholden stylistically to no other vibes player. He's also an excellent composer, two of whose compositions - a touching tribute to a unique singer, the late Eva Cassidy, and an invigorating evocation of his New York home, Crescent Street - stimulated some of his and Smith's best playing. But it was an unaccompanied, oblique, lyrical examination of a standard, My Foolish Heart, that produced the standout music of the afternoon.

The Triskel also offered good music. Guitarist Mike Nielsen, duetting with singer Ellen Demos, was in sublime form, playing with the utmost delicacy and a complete absence of superfluous gesture. Demos, who has a fine voice, with great range and control, and a quick ear which allows her to take chances, does tend to use her considerable vocal equipment because it is there. It was telling that the most memorable item of the concert was a beautiful Jobim tune, Barraçao, where she kept it relatively simple, serving the lyrics and the tune best.

In for Mariano at the Triskel on the same night, Organics - Justin Carroll (Hammond), John Moriarty (guitar) and Kevin Brady (drums) - provided the rhythm section for two exceptional altoists, Bobby Watson, and a very good Australian, Graeme Blevins. In what was, in the circumstances, a kind of jam session, it was remarkable to hear the inspirational impact these visitors had on the trio. Watson, especially, set some punishing tempos and the response of the other musicians to being stretched was memorable.

There were other pleasures over the weekend. Although hampered by poor sound balance at the Festival Club in the Gresham Metropole, the great Scottish tenor, Bobby Wellins, reminded his fans just how good he is, turning in solo after solo of great originality with seemingly offhand nonchalance. He had a hand-in-glove rhythm section in pianist Mark Edwards, bassist Andy Cleyndert and drummer Spike Wells.

And there was time to catch other enjoyable bands at the Festival Club, including pianist Phil Ware's trio, with bassist Dave Redmond and Kevin Brady, guitarist Sami Moukaddem's entertaining blend of Arab music and jazz in a group which included saxophonist Brendan Doyle and drummer Myles Drennan, and drummer Cormac Larkin's trio, Apple Crumble, whose name is a tribute to the great guitarist, John Abercrombie.

As always, though, Cork is about the ones that got away as much as it is about the ones that were heard. Sunday night posed just such a dilemma: go to the Everyman, where accordionist Richard Galliano, sharing the bill with rising young singer Jane Monheit was sure to delight, or to the Opera House, where the Mingus Big Band was topping the programme, supported by the Babatunde Lea Quartet with special guest Bobby Watson?

The Mingus Big Band was the choice - and it was a good one. No boundaries stretched, and you could nitpick and ask where was the spirit of Charles Mingus in some of what they did, but this was nevertheless a powerhouse of a band, loose and relaxed. With musicians of the calibre of saxophonists Ronnie Cuber and Craig Handy, trombonists Ku-Umba Frank Lacy, Conrad Herwig and Earl McIntyre and a hair-raising trumpet section which had the iron-lipped Alex Sipiagin in it, how could things be otherwise?

The weekend also saw the passing of another Irish jazz musician, drummer Pete Ainscough, himself a frequent visitor to Cork, both as a performer and a punter. The reaction among musicians to the news was a tribute to the affection in which he was held.