Reviews

Monty Alexander TrioVicar StreetRay Comiskey

Wednesday night's rapturously received Monty Alexander Trio concert, the last in the current ESB spring jazz series, was a game of two halves. The opening set by the trio - Alexander (piano), Davide Petrocca (bass) and George Fludas (drums) - was proficient, swinging, but despite that, curiously uninvolving. With an orchestral approach to the piano, and the technical and harmonic command to go with it, Alexander seemed to toy with the material, content to decorate rather than get fully inside it.

Much of this was epitomised by the abundance of quotes and effects on Work Song, where, for example, the outchoruses ran a nimble gamut of key changes to no great purpose. To varying degrees the same was true of - if the titles are correct - Gingerbread Boy and Don't Stop The Carnival, though his own compositions, such as Trust, seem to suffer less from this. It was a pity, because the trio is a tight, cohesive unit, with an accomplished drummer and a hugely impressive bassist; Petrocca's solos, in fact, were perhaps the best in the opening set.

The second set opened unpromisingly. More adroit juggling, as they ranged back and forth between the slow movement from Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez and Miles Davis's All Blues, suggested the jazz equivalent of Sunday Night At The Proms. Then, abruptly, they clicked. Taken at a Formula 1 speed that taxed even Alexander's abundant technique, Sweet Georgia Brown seemed to shake something loose. The trio began to groove irresistibly, and from then on it was swinging blissfully, ranging over some beguilingly evocative originals composed by Alexander to reflect his Jamaican roots, and taking in utterly engaging performances on Charlie Chaplin's Smile and the stately cadences of the late John Lewis's Django that brought the audience to its feet at the end.

NSO/Rumon Gamba

National Concert Hall

Martin Adams

Chorales...........................Howard Skempton

Wiener Blut...............................Gerald Barry

Lento.................................Howard Skempton

The Eternal Recurrence............Gerald Barry

There is nothing extraneous about it. It speaks directly." That was how Gerald Barry described his music, during the pre-concert talk last Tuesday evening at the National Concert Hall. For this concert in the Horizons series, Barry assembled a programme which reflected that ideal in ways more subtle than stylistic resemblance.

At first sight, the only thing which Howard Skempton's music seems to have in common with Barry's is single-mindedness. Since the late 1960s, Skempton has been one of the most independent voices in British music, one who sees composition as "more about problem-solving than development". Chorales (1980) is a series of short movements framed and punctuated by three statements of the opening - delicately coloured chords, one to a bar, with no rhythmic variation. Lento (1990) works similar ideas at length. Tempo and the rate of chordal change are almost-constant; and the chords are all major or minor.

Mesmeric stillness, beautiful orchestral colour - this music is not really expressive. It is just - there.

The contrast with the electrifying, frantic energy of Barry's Wiener Blut (full orchestral version) was startling. Yet as the composers' discussions with Martyn Westerman revealed, both men struggle with issues of history, with how to escape its dominating, referential power. In this work and in The Eternal Recurrence, Barry does not so much use pre-existing material as swat at it, squash it out of recognition.

All the music was well-served by the National Symphony Orchestra and conductor Rumon Gamba. In The Eternal Recurrence soprano Mary Hegarty was a star, fearless in her delivery of Nietzsche's extraordinary words, and in her grip on Barry's no-less-extraordinary music.

Giant Sand

Vicar Street

Peter Crawley

A single light reveals Howe Gelb alone on stage. He gently picks a melody from his guitar, punctuated with abrasive strums. As the lights gradually grow, so too does his company. Joe Burns ambles to an upright bass, bowing eerie notes under the melody while shuddering feedback from his amplifier. Soon a soft vibraphone shimmers its own theme while a muted pizzicato violin trembles above it.

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of Giant Sand, 20 years and 22 albums into the business of alt.country. With its roots nominally in Tuscon, but its current seven-piece spanning the continents, Gelb's pet-project is rife with experimentation, surprises and contradictions.

One song melted into another as Gelb took to his grand piano and trumpeteer Noah Thomas nonchalantly joined the assembly. For Giant Sand, it appears that segue is the only way. Pursuing a improvisatory set, Gelb smirked wickedly beneath his neat goatee. Wrongfooting the audience (and frequently his band) with randomly parachuted snippets from a personal CD player, his was a battery-operated approach to live and recorded synthesis. Throughout the set, the Discman remained a major player.

The moments when the group opened throttle were most exhilarating. Frequent jokes, open invitations to hecklers and a conch solo (Thomas getting jiggy with the crustacean) made them eccentrically endearing and blissfully bewildering.