High notes and low moments

It was a year of change and surprises in classical music and not enough change in jazz, write Irish Times critics in the concluding round-up of 2002

CLASSICAL AND OPERA/Michael Dervan: It has been a year of change for music-making in Ireland. The National Chamber Choir acquired a new artistic director, Celso Antunes, who has, at a stroke, transformed the choir's repertoire and performing style. The potential of this choir had never been in doubt, but it had for a long time lingered in a rut, churning out bitty, unfocused programmes, and performing them in a one-size-fits-all manner that minimised stylistic distinctions between composers and periods of musical history. Under Antunes, the NCC is now regularly bringing Irish audiences rarely-heard glories of the choral repertoire in thoughtfully constructed programmes that are performed with sometimes breathtaking panache.

The Irish Chamber Orchestra has also set out on a new path, with the departure of violinist Fionnuala Hunt as artistic director, and the arrival of Nicholas McGegan, a leading exponent of period performance style. He has taken over as music director and also, of course, as director of the Killaloe Music Festival, which is run by the ICO.

McGegan's work with the orchestra has brought a fresh sense of vitality to the orchestra's playing, although his programming to date doesn't match Hunt's for its commitment to new work by Irish composers. The ICO also appointed Romanian violinist Marian Sirbu, one-time leader of the RTÉ Academica String Quartet (the precursors of the Vanbrughs), as guest director. The orchestra, which is now at a playing strength of 19 strings (and hopes to start putting wind players on contract during McGegan's term), wants to develop its festival further, and is actively looking into the possibilities of developing another performing space in Killaloe.

Chicago-based William Eddins took up his new position as principal guest conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in November. He launched himself into the role with an all-Gershwin programme that highlighted the facility he has for making the orchestra play a few degrees above its normal peak. Earlier in the year, he showed himself equally adept at achieving similar results in an all-Beethoven programme.

Audiences have responded to him with an enthusiasm this orchestra hasn't experienced since Bryden Thomson's reign in the mid-1980s.

Dublin acquired what is shaping up to be its finest concert hall in October, with the opening of The Helix at Dublin City University. The Helix has three performing spaces, and its 1,260-seat Mahony Hall quite eclipses the main auditorium of the National Concert Hall in terms of sound and atmosphere.

The draped stage of The Helix's 450-seat theatre, however, proved inimical to concert activity during RTÉ's Living Music Festival; the only opera I saw there, a Mid Wales Opera production of Rossini's Cenerentola, was not the sort of offering to judge the potential of the new venue by.

The RTÉ Living Music Festival was itself a welcome change, the RTÉ music division's response to Lyric FM's Gerald Barry Festival of two years ago, and a welcome proof, after a range of false starts over the years, that the music division can actually get things right when it comes to contemporary music. The earlier weekend that focused on the work of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern went quite off the rails in terms of programming, and suffered some poor attendances which offered a clear indication of potential audiences being alienated by the inappropriate and indigestible diet of some of the programmes presented.

The Living Music Festival had a tighter focus, and its main subject, Italy's greatest living composer, Luciano Berio, was well served by the programming and by the seminars and workshops under the guidance of the Berio expert, David Osmond-Smith.

Another new venture in a heartening year for contemporary music was the Up North! festival of Irish and Nordic music run at the beginning of December by the Crash Ensemble. Musically, this was not on a par with the Berio event, but it delivered a wide range of unfamiliar music to a willing audience, and seems likely to have sown the seeds for long-lasting collaborations between Irish composers and musicians and their Nordic colleagues.

Christ Church Baroque was in sparkling form under guest director Andrew Manze in January, but in a sometimes shocking state under Nicholas Kraemer when I last heard them in October. There is a serious need for fresh thinking in this period-instruments ensemble, just as there is at the RTÉCO, which, incredibly, has not yet managed to announce the programme for a single series of classical concerts at The Helix, the venue which, until September, the orchestra had been expecting to perform in on a weekly basis.

The operatic highlights of the year turned up in the most unexpected of places. The complete concert performance of Wagner's Ring by the National Youth Orchestra under Alexander Anissimov at the University Concert Hall in Limerick (followed by a repeat at Symphony Hall in Birmingham) made a lasting impression on all who heard it. It has resulted in the formation of a new Wagner society in Ireland, and the NYO and the Limerick hall are actively trying to work out how and when to follow up on this most remarkable of successes.

The Wexford Festival is facing a barrage of criticism about the absence of Irish talent at virtually all levels in its performances this year. The situation is not a sustainable one, and although the suggestion that's been put forward - to set up a quota system - is downright preposterous, a public indication of the festival's thinking would be more than welcome.

The two most important questions are: will anything be done to rectify the situation in 2003? And how will the issue be addressed in hiring the artistic director who will replace Luigi Ferrari at the end of the 2003 festival?

Opera Ireland restored some order after its immediate money problems were solved by a cash injection of some €600,000 in January - how remote such a possibility would be now, in a climate of cutback after cutback. Controversial Catalan director Calixto Bieito's Carmen provided no particular shocks, and the hit-and-miss production pattern resumed in November, with Dieter Kaegi's handling of Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades more than compensating for the longueurs of Giordano's Andrea Chénier.

The most talked-about opera of the year was one I unfortunately missed, John Fulljames's audience-embracing Opera Theatre Company production of Viktor Ullmann's Emperor of Atlantis at Kilmainham Gaol.

The most memorable vocal performances, however, were not in the opera house. Megastar mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli conquered Irish hearts at her NCH début in September, and two amateur choirs, the New London Chamber Choir (at the Dublin International Organ and Choral Festival) and Sweden's Rilke Ensemble (at the Up North! festival), showed that contemporary music performances of the highest rank are indeed achievable by dedicated amateurs under the right direction.

And the most heartening orchestral performance of the year came from the NSO in Mahler and Johann Strauss under Benjamin Zander. As I wrote at the time, if there's justice in this world, and luck is on our side, RTÉ will already have invited him back to do a complete Mahler cycle.

Here's hoping.

JAZZ/Ray Comiskey: There were concerts to remember, and some to forget. There was one of the better festivals in Cork. There were signs that the still young Bray Jazz Festival was living up to its early promise. There was a run of diverse and superior bands and musicians visiting throughout the year, some living up to expectations. And there was continued evidence of a really fine crop of young musicians emerging on the local jazz scene, particularly in Dublin.

On the other hand . . .

There was the unavoidable postponement of the ESB Dublin Jazz Festival, an event which, historically, has raised the bar in terms of festival programming here. Some consolation for this was the ESB/IMC Project Weekender, which brought in a welter of new music, including bassist Drew Gress's Spin 'n' Drift, and showcased significant Irish jazz, as well as bringing the celebrated trumpeter, Tom Harrell, to Dublin for the first time.

A major disappointment, however, remains the apparent failure of The Improvised Music Company's well-thought-out and well-costed proposals for using the Viking Centre in Temple Bar as a centre for jazz. The powers that be on Dublin's rive gauche, Temple Bar Properties, didn't seem to appreciate fully the potential for the development of jazz here, so jazz musicians, including the talented crop coming up, continue to be faced with the dubious, smoke-laden hospitality of pubs as venues for their art.

Despite its origins in the first half of this year, this Viking Centre saga is still running. With the original applicants to Temple Bar Properties long since narrowed down to four proposals, it has long been common, if never officially confirmed, knowledge that the Irish Film Centre - which already has extensive premises in a prime location in Temple Bar - was the preferred applicant, and that the IFC had been asked to give more specific details, including financial ones, about its proposal.

Now, more than seven months on, no official decision has been announced. At the time of writing, Temple Bar Properties is still, apparently, discussing the matter. Extraordinary. As the man said: it's no way to run a railroad.

The backdrop to all this is a darkening economic climate in which State cutbacks are impacting on everything from health and education services down and opportunities for corporate sponsorship are becoming more volatile. It has to be remembered, however, that the quality of State and corporate support of jazz over the last decade - especially during the past five years - has helped to kick-start a still-burgeoning jazz scene here, as well as a multicultural scene embracing jazz and world music. Thus, the importance of a suitable permanent home for jazz is self-evident to anyone interested in and committed to the music.

Jazz is a performance art and, like all such arts, has clear infrastructural needs; in other words, a space which can cater for concerts of differing scales, for rehearsals and for a lean administration to run it, and which would be available to all in the music. Beyond the current economic gloom, it's the absence of such a space that will jeopardise the gains already made and the longer-term development of the music and its young practitioners here.

There was better news elsewhere. The Guinness Cork Jazz Festival claimed, with some justification, that its 25th anniversary event was its most successful ever. Judgment on that claim depends on whether you're looking at bums on seats or bums on the bandstand, though, to be fair, there seemed to be more of the former and fewer of the latter this time round. Musically, at any rate, it had plenty of quality.

It also had probably the happiest concert memory of the year. The Triskel hosted a double bill on the festival's Saturday night with saxophonist Julian Arguelles, bassist Ronan Guilfoyle and drummer Jim Black, followed by the great Kenny Wheeler (trumpet/flugelhorn), John Abercrombie (guitar) and Marc Copland (piano). It produced one of those delightful nights when all the musicians seemed intent on mutual, rather than individual, pleasure. And the next night, with pianist Jason Moran's trio, was almost as good.

Abercrombie was also heard earlier in the year in Dublin, when The Improvised Music Company brought him into Vicar St. He had a superb working group with him - violinist Mark Feldman, bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joey Baron - and they mostly delivered.

Apart from its multicultural ESB Routes in Rhythm series, the IMC brought in a typically left-field selection of artists - pianist David Berkman, Andy Laster's singular Hydra, bopper Damon Brown's quintet, a collaboration with famed Boston jazz college Berklee, which saw pianist Laszlo Gardony on stage at The Shelter with Rick Peckham, Jamey Haddad and Ronan Guilfoyle, and tours by the Esbjörn Svensson Trio and Denys Baptiste's Alternating Currents. There was lots more from the IMC, including a free summer series at the Civic Offices in Dublin, and a further get-together of the Arguelles-Guilfoyle-Black trio at JJs in Dublin.

Drummer Joey Baron made a return visit as part of the ESB/Note Productions jazz series for a concert which got one of the most positive audience responses in the series; only a curmudgeon would have disliked it. Guilty. Despite having some notable musicians, including pianist Geri Allen, trumpeter Roy Hargrove and vibes player Stefon Harris (due in Dublin tomorrow and in Cork on Sunday), overall the series promised more than it actually delivered.

Note's own concerts were, generally speaking, more interestingly and adventurously programmed. Vocalist Kurt Elling returned, as did pianist Bill Charlap and, yet again, the Brad Mehldau Trio. Also in under the Note banner were the gifted young guitarist, Kurt Rosenwinkel's group, the uncategorisable Sex Mob, featuring Steven Bernstein, and singers Omara Portuondo and Susana Baca, whose connections with ethnic musics were further evidence of musical multiculturalism here.

Music Network did valuable work during the year, bringing in Kurt Rosenwinkel to tour with saxophonist Michael Buckley; they were also involved in saxophonist Richie Buckley's visit to Sweden to play with the Swedish pianist, Jacob Karlzon, with whose trio he had toured Ireland for Music Network in late 2001.

Arts centres around the country also benefited from these activities - a fact which underlines the importance of a space for a performance art like jazz. The liveliest of them all remained Cork's Triskel, which put on Sex Mob, Damon Brown, Susana Baca, Denys Baptiste, Bill Charlap, Kurt Rosenwinkel and Drew Gress during the year, as well as playing a significant part in the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival.

And, speaking of festivals, it was encouraging to see the increased presence of jazz in this year's Kilkenny Arts Week, with players as diverse as perennial avant-garde saxophonist Hans Koller and Scotland's fine bop trumpeter, Colin Steele, performing in differing venues.