Music `beyond category'

Duke Ellington's highest praise for a musician was to call him or her "beyond category"

Duke Ellington's highest praise for a musician was to call him or her "beyond category". He would surely have applied that accolade to cellist Ernst Reijseger, whose solo concert in the Hugh Lane Gallery yesterday, as part of the ESB Dublin Jazz Week, was an extraordinary experience, heart-warming and uplifting.

And, frankly, difficult to do justice to. His work moves fluidly across the boundaries between jazz, classical music and free improvisation as if they didn't exist, which, for him, they surely do not. With a technique which is way beyond mere instrumental virtuosity, he draws an astonishing range of sounds from the instrument, using every part of the cello.

In his gifted hands it can suggest a guitar, boogie woogie piano, traffic sounds, a percussion section (using pegs on the strings), all kinds of vocalisations - sometimes accompanied by wordless singing, unison, harmonised or contrapuntal, and unison whistling - and even, as an encore, a saw. And, not incidentally, he can call on a gorgeous, pure "classical" tone when he wants. But such descriptions are merely limiting. They do nothing to convey the humour, warmth, sadness and humanity of his work, or the sheer musicality with which it was delivered. This is a great musician, a cellist who is utterly unique, a one-off who is definitely beyond category.

Equally difficult to categorise is pianist Django Bates, who brought his Quiet Nights quintet, including the fine singer, Josefine Crnholm, to the HQ on Thursday. Much of the material came from the group's CD, but often changed as Bates's near-genius for surprise and musical humour took him to dance across fresh pastures.

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It was brilliant, enjoyable, but just a bit relentless in its determination to find the funny and the outre. Bates is a marvellously gifted musician and, in this mode, rather like seeing Puck in charge of a kind of delightful jazz son et lumiere. Nevertheless, the outstanding Speak Low, Like Someone In Love and the splendid Iain Bellamy's tenor on Over The Rainbow did suggest something more complex, in terms of feeling, than a great musical intelligence at play.

There was no doubt about the impact of The Night in Havana Orchestra at Vicar Street on Friday. Perhaps sparked by the direction of New York-based trumpeter Michael Mossman, with Mark Levine from Los Angeles on piano, the big band played with a power and verve that took no prisoners.

The section work - from trumpets, trombones, reeds and rhythm - was marvellously ebullient, while the sheer solo strength available from such as Mark Bradley, Mark Adams, Karl Ronan, Michael Buckley, Mark Wilde and Derek O'Connor underlined just how good this orchestra is.

In the John Field Room on Friday, The Improvised Music Ensemble (TIME) provided another concert to savour. The band sounded in fine form and unveiled some additions to the repertoire already on its Sundials CD, including a complex and imaginative original, Second Time Around, by Mike Nielsen - in a careful outing which suggested it needs a few more performances to do it full justice - a lovely arrangement of Embraceable You and an original, Strabo, both by Ronan Guilfoyle.

On Saturday, in Vicar Street, the Jazz Week continued with a concert from the remarkable Brazilian pianist/singer, Eliane Elias, completing an accomplished trio with Marc Johnson (bass) and Satoshi Takeishi (drums). This was at times superb, with inventive treatments of Bye Bye Blackbird, Beggar's Blue Sky, Bowing To Bud and a virtuoso display by all concerned on The Time Is Now. It was also, at times, like a well-oiled machine and just as absorbing; the most consistently interesting element in the group remains the bassist. They were preceded by Noel Kelehan's quartet which, on the ballads Garden In The Rain and My Foolish Heart, provided two of the best moments of the evening.

With just the UMO Jazz Orchestra to come at the time of writing, it's obvious that the Jazz Week has been an outstanding success, musically, educationally and for the big, new audiences it has attracted. As a festival where the focus is on the music, rather than bacchanalia, with mainly good venues and comfortable listening conditions, it's a vindication of the policies of programme director Gerry Godley.

Finally, in last Friday's review of the early part of the Jazz Week a paragraph about pianist Gordon Beck's solo concert was cut and replaced. The effect was to make the final paragraph, which was also about that concert, a non sequitur.