Review

MICHAEL DERVANreviews Smyth, Marshall and Sanders at the NCH Kevin Barry Room, Dublin

The two composers behind the music company Ergodos, Garrett Sholdice and Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, are interested in “music that doesn’t fit the grid, that falls between the cracks, that evades definition”.

If there’s one area of endeavour that seems to fit their particular bill, it would have to be improvisation. And on Wednesday they presented the first concert by the new improvising trio of Paul G Smyth (piano), Hannah Marshall (cello) and Mark Sanders (drums).

It is, by any stretch of the imagination, an unusual combination. The pairing of cello and piano represents a rich and distinguished tradition that goes back to Beethoven, a tradition in which the cellist normally takes top billing. The combination of piano and drums comes instead from the world of jazz.

On Wednesday, the driving force seemed to be the drummer. It was Sanders who launched each set, carefully setting the character of the first one with shuffles and shimmers, and opening the second with hard- edged violence.

The wildest improvisations I’ve heard have tended to be from solo performers. In a group situation, there’s the obvious limiting factor of needing to keep abreast of what your partners are doing – you can only respond to the other musicians if you can actually hear what they’re doing.

Sanders, Smyth and Marshall showed themselves to be good listeners, picking up on threads and potentialities from each other’s playing, and entering into contemplative pools to allow the next germ to identify itself.

It wasn’t an entirely balanced evening. Marshall’s noise-making adventures, as she explored the sound-producing potential of the bits of instrument and bow that most composers still don’t write for, fully integrated into the general flurry.

But her brief forays into rather more conventional melodic gesture were anything but convincing. It will be interesting, over time, to see how the bits that genuinely fell between the cracks on Wednesday are integrated into this trio’s future work.