Gary Scott/Mundell Lowe

Wednesday's Dublin Jazz Society concert was as comfortable as a pair of old slippers - and just about as lively

Wednesday's Dublin Jazz Society concert was as comfortable as a pair of old slippers - and just about as lively. Which is not to say there wasn't class around; Lowe is one of the truly great figures in jazz guitar, the little- known tenor saxophonist, Scott, is a formidably competent professional, consistency personified, a solid mainstream player with a big band background, while Myles Drennan, Dave Fleming and John Wadham are a well-seasoned rhythm section. That the concert wasn't more engaging was due in no small part to the complete absence of an opportunity to rehearse and, possibly, a stage set-up which may not have allowed the group to hear each other properly, all factors calculated to engender caution. The repertoire, therefore, was much as might be expected in the circumstances: Just Friends, East Of The Sun, Squeeze Me, Wave, Scrapple From The Apple, Darn That Dream, Body and Soul, Autumn Leaves, The Girl From Ipanema are alt more or less part of the main- stream lingua Franca.

Lowe's vast store of harmonic and melodic ideas, as well as his rhythmic ease and abundant technique, made him the outstanding performer, notably on a delightfully oblique introduction to East Of The Sun and a spellbinding unaccompanied one to Body and Soul, prefiguring a group performance which, incidentally, was one of the quintet's best of the night. Elsewhere it was, essentially, decent craftsmanship without that extra spark to give it what the critic Whitney Balliett once called the sound of surprise.