Ray Comiskey heard the Alan Barnes/Bruce Adams/Phil Ware Trio
in Whelans, Dublin.
The Dublin Jazz Society's first concert of the year was a salute to the late, great tenor saxophonist, Hank Mobley, founder member of the seminal hard bop group the Jazz Messengers and later part of Miles Davis's quintet. To the older members of the audience this style of half a century ago doubtless offered the comfort of nostalgia and the reassurance of the familiar. Judging by the response of the surprisingly large attendance of younger people, however, it also offered them a welcome demonstration of the warmth, directness and accessibility of the idiom in the right hands.
It got those in alto saxophonist Alan Barnes, and trumpeter and flugelhorn player Bruce Adams, who have the virtuoso instrumental skills, imagination and sheer energy the style demands. More than ably supported by the working trio of Phil Ware (piano), Dave Redmond (bass) and Kevin Brady (drums), it meant they could perform in the knowledge that they had a rhythm section which spoke the language to the manner born. That it turned out so well, given virtually no rehearsal time to get acquainted musically, is a tribute to all concerned. After a somewhat nervous start with Mobley's own Smokin', at a take-no-prisoners tempo, and a medium-up excursion on Horace Silver's Ecaroh (described by Barnes as "the longest jazz tune ever written - and it feels like it"), things gradually began to settle.
A slower If I Should Lose You spotlighted some fine flugelhorn and alto, but Barnes surpassed that with a memorable effort on Mobley's East Of The Village, and both he and Adams got into an exciting extended coda that resolved into a play on It Ain't Necessarily So. By the time they were on the final piece of the first set, Mobley's medium-up Uh Huh, the quintet had really begun to groove, and the performance was marked by a series of fine solos, particularly from Phil Ware and Barnes, with the altoist playing over stop-time from the rhythm section.
There were occasional rough moments, but this concert wasn't about getting things clean and precise; it was about achieving the kind of relaxed drive, loose but together, that the music requires. It continued with an even better second set full of reminders of some of Mobley's classic Blue Note albums of 50 years ago - This I Dig Of You, Remember (with a fine bass solo from Redmond), I Should Care and Funk In A Deep Freeze - as well as Horace Silver's tricky Senor Blues.
Despite being a venerable style, hard bop continues to charm, partly because of its intrinsically soulful qualities, but also as a change of pace on the many-faceted contemporary scene. And when it gets the kind of performances this quintet gave it, the results are undeniably enjoyable. The happy atmosphere was typified by an encore, Oleo, in which Adams played unison lines on both trumpet and flugelhorn simultaneously, to the great delight of the audience.
