In its 21st year the Guinness Jazz Festival in Cork remains a musical patchwork quilt. And under it that perennial odd couple, Art and Commerce, were seeking to redefine their uneasy relationship, or at least one partner was.
That there was also good jazz to be found seems increasingly incidental to the tunes being called by the partner paying the piper. Symptomatic is the television promotion of the festival as the home of the G Club Mix, whose connections with jazz are tenuous, with no mention of the considerable jazz artists scheduled to appear.
By now it has made the Opera House its own, and the kind of unreflective background to booze, talk and anything but listening it implies is starting to squeeze its way more into the Metropole. And with it, the possibility of peaceful co-existence with the real jazz heart of the festival is gradually being eroded as Commerce has its way.
Chief among its merits this year was the privilege of seeing the legendary Elvin Jones perform to a packed Everyman theatre on Saturday. Though the concert started about an hour late, it was worth the wait.
At 71, Jones uses the power with which he rewrote the language of jazz drumming in John Coltrane's late-50s, early-60s quartet more sparingly these days. But it's still there, mixed with taste and delicacy, and he was the dominant figure in the splendid quintet he brought, notable for the beautiful trumpet of Eddie Henderson and the work of pianist Carlos McKinney.
They were preceded by Ron Affif quartet, in which the leader revealed himself as a highly capable performer.
Another memorable element was the Tommy Flanagan trio. Pianist Flanagan, another elder statesman, formed with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash a group whose elegance and refinement never denied the hot blood of swinging jazz coursing through its veins.
For guitarist Dave O'Rourke, who helped to bring them here, it must have been an experience to have this Rolls Royce rhythm section behind him when he soloed.
There were further pianistic pleasures at the festival. Lynne Arriale was back, sounding better than ever, bringing a poetic sensibility to bear on a varied range of material, much of it composed by herself. With her was her longtime drummer, Steve Davis, and bassist Dave Fleming, who coped so well with a largely unfamiliar book.
Despite touches of Bill Evans in her work, Arriale doesn't really sound like any other pianist. But there's no doubt where Lorraine Desmarais, comes from musically. This young French Canadian pianist is a hugely impressive, highenergy performer who, rhythm ically and harmonically, comes from another seminal figure in the same John Coltrane quartet in which Elvin Jones made his name, McCoy Tyner.
Paradoxically, one of Desmarais's originals, Bill, was a tribute to and, thematically at least, an uncanny evocation of Evans's style and manner.
With comparatively limited opportunities to perform together, the Irish Jazz Orchestra, under the direction of the brilliant Canadian trombonist, Hugh Fraser, has developed into a formidable unit.
Tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson was another success, as featured soloist with a largely Irish group led by pianist Fintan O'Neill, with Hugh Buckley (guitar), Darren Beckett (drums) and American bassist Peter Washington. As a group more or less thrown together for the festival, it worked surprisingly well.
O'Neill continues to manifest development in his playing with each visit home from New York, as does Beckett. And Hugh Buckley confirmed the impression that he is approaching the peak of his powers as a player and composer.
If that mixture worked, another one did not. Despite the undeniable quality of the talents involved, the Louis Stewart/Mark Turner link-up was hardly a marriage made in heaven. Stewart was awesomely good and easily dominated a quintet completed by pianist Myles Drennan, bassist Jeremy Brown and drummer Stephen Keogh.
But Turner is a superb young tenor whose musical background is, unusually, from the late, great saxophonist, Warne Marsh, and the two styles simply did not find common ground.
Deadlines and programme clashes combined to defeat anything more than the merest taste of some other interesting offerings, among them ex-Buddy Rich alumni Steve Marcus and Andy Fusco with the Joyce DiCamillo trio, Hendrik Meurkens with Jim Doherty, Dave Fleming and John Wadham, Australian saxophonist Dale Barlow with Anthony Kerr, Ronan Guilfoyle and Darren Beckett, and, especially, Chico Freeman's mouth-watering quintet, with Gary Bartz (alto), George Cables (piano), Santi Debriano (bass) and Vic Lewis (drums); after a delayed start, they blasted off superlatively.
It was moving to see the great veteran trombonist, Al Grey, prove that he is, so to speak, vintage port. Somehow, when you've got it, you never really lose it. Let's hope the same proves true of the Guinness Jazz Festival.