A Jazz World
Brian Trench takes a trip around Dublin's jazz hotspots.
Like elephants congregating in a jungle clearing, Dublin's jazz musicians and their audience pack into one day more activity than in all other days of the week combined. For the rest of the week, they meet small conclaves in cramped dimly lit basements.
But on Sunday, in the Peppermint Gardens, drinks come at £1 and the music comes in dicky-bows and coats. In Casper & Giumbini's, there no food but a menu of mainstream starters, modern main course and stylishly swinging dessert. There are queues at Sachs Hotel where Woolly Lamb and the Black Sheep - black referring to the colour of the economy which they work - provide not-too-clean fun.
On Sunday, musicians and instruments criss-cross the town. After two sessions in C&G's, Jimmy McKay hauls his bass around the corner to Timmermanns Wine Cellar, where the music is more laid back and the wine ten pence a glass dearer. Long John's Jump Band starts the day in Howth hotel and finishes up in a Merrion Row pub. Guitarist Tommy Halferty moves several decades from “sitting in” with Hotfoot at the Sportsman's Inn to leading his own trio in the Focus Theatre. Paul Sweeney takes his horn from mainstream in C&G's to trade in the International Airport Hotel - and is the strongest asset in both bands' front lines.
Some musicians float without firm landing points in this melange of styles and line-ups. "Sitting in" and "depping" are rife. Sligo-based Rory McGuinness (tenor sax) and Michael Nielsen (guitar) have been swopping chops with JaDa, Jack Daly's band. Bob Hyland may turn up to sing in the Peppermint Gardens or in Timmermanns.
On one recent Sunday, Long John's Jump Band had a stand-in drummer, Dessie Reynolds took Jack Daly's place at the drums in Jack Daly's band, Brian Dunning was not playing in the Brian Dunning Quartet but in The Marriage of Figaro, and guitarist and singer Jimmy Faulkner was replaced for Hotfoot's lunch-time session by the vocally mute guitarist, Tommy Halferty.
While Long John's men are launching the late-risers of Howth into the day, JaDa open the proceedings at Casper & Giumbini's. As guitarist Rick Walsh, assuming the leadership while Jack Daly recovers from an operation, put it: "If you have the money and the constitution you can make a day of it." Prices are no more punitive than most places but the five hours of music do take their toll.
JaDa swings with ease; at the piano, there is some uncertainty of keys. No such doubts when Louis Stewart's quartet takes the stand in the afternoon. The guitarist and composer - whose suite based on scenes from Ulysses cries out for a second performance to follow that given in Cork last October - has played an invaluable role in encouraging young musicians. Not only guitarists like the now-matured Tommy Halferty, and the developing Dave O'Rourke and Hugh Buckley, but a wide range of instrumentalists - bassists Ronan Guilfoyle and Lindsay Horner, pianist Gerry Roebuck, saxophonist Richie Buckley, drummer Stephen Keogh, now splashing around on cymbals with new freedom.
In C&G's, Louis Stewart is playing with his most senior band for some years - Jim Doherty (piano), Jimmy McKay (bass), John Wadham (drums). The Friday night line-up in Slattery's of Capel Street, where other sessions have been suffering from minimal attendances, is quite different. Louis Stewart's rootedness in Dublin is remarkable. He is widely respected in the international jazz scene and has been contracted for concerts in Australia, recordings in Germany and tours in the United States.
His form, like anybody else's, varies. It can be read off his face when he is unhappy with something he does. On this Sunday, he joins Richie Buckley and singer Honor Heffernan for the evening session. After an indecisive start to the Charlie Parker tune, Scrapple From The Apple, then a strong solo from Buckley, which comes out as a steady flow of short, fast chops, Stewart raises much more difficult questions. His improvised ideas have a much longer span and a much more oblique reference to the root chords. He throws the next number into a completely different gear after Buckley's hard-blown solo by taking his with Noel Kelehan (piano) alone. Grimaces, then smiles, tell the story of tensions relieved.
When Honor Heffernan - shortly to follow up the Royal Wildlife Fund performance with another concert in London - takes the stand, the loud type in the check tweed suit and purple waistcoat at the next table, at last stops to listen. The voice is compelling. But most of the numbers are standard and the phrasing conventional. Noel Kelehan's arrangements and the instrumental solos provide most of the essential uncertainty of jazz content.
When Hotfoot or Nicholas McGuinness sing, it is another experience altogether. The trombone player and band leader is one of those who drops into the sessions by the Tony Scott Trio in Timmermanns. Rather battered and very husky, he ended on recent set nearly swallowing the mike on a song he re-shaped as Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out. To the basic unit of Scott, Jimmy McKay and Gerry Ryan (drums) may also be added Ray Dempsey's. harmonica - much swallowing there, too, and much good sounds - and Bob Hyland's vocals. The trio is in residence among the church furniture, the mulled wine (£1) and the cheeseboards (£1.50) on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
By the time Hotfoot reaches the Meeting Place on Sunday evenings, with a lunch-time gig behind them, the quartet's members are emotional, if not tired. Decorating their session with banter which they find much more hilarious even than the wholly sympathetic audience, they still hit the close harmonies spot on from physically difficult positions, and they swing more mightily than many a bass-and-drums-based band.
On Django Reinhardt's Nuages, Jimmy Faulkner provides a suitably airy touch, opening his solo with an extended passage on harmonics. There is a camp-fire glow to Patrick Collins's fiddling on Gypsy Dance - a strange combination of Latin and Slav. The Sunday effect shows not only in the ordering of drinks over the p.a. and the one-way conversations with people passing the band stands to the loos (Faulkner: "Hi ya, Mary, I love your cloak. Where's your dagger?") but also in the sitting-in which ends the night.
Errol Walsh is the guest, performing a waltz-time Tennessee Blues and his own My Daddy, the first not quite as poignant as intended, the second good fun and shortly to be heard on an RTE album. In the constant shuffling and re-shuffling of the pack of Dublin 's best musicians, Errol Walsh's Country Honky Tonk Band includes Hotfoot's bassist, Deadpan Declan McNelis. The EWCHT Band plays an excellent set in the Belvedere Hotel, Wednesdays.
That is also one of the Downstairs jazz nights. The Nassau Street basement eatery has extended its music programme from one night to two, and from a maximum two musicians to three. The plentifully equipped John Wad ham is restricted to snare, cymbal and hi-hat for the Tommy Halferty Trio sessions on Saturdays. In the free and equal exchange which defines this group - currently the consistent in personnel and quality of the Dublin jazz formations - Wadham still doesn't miss a trick. In the tiny basement, the Latin-American rattle, the cabaña, is enough to reach all corners.
On a Saturday evening after a rugby international, the patron is slightly nervous. He's had a table-load of Molly Malone-singers and he's uncertain how the French group will react. But as the band settles in, the crowd thins out. The music comes above background and stimulates J and Steve to cross arms and eat other's lamb kebabs and spaghetti bolognese reciprocally.
It's a very reciprocal kind of b Bassist Ronan Guilfoyle is the third point of the triangle, frequently taking solos as long as those of the titular head. Guitar and bass take very similar rhythmic approaches. It is a trio of triplets. The clicks of insects go to an early end in the machine on ceiling add to the cross-rhythms.
Guitarists Sacha Distel and Bam Kessel, tenor saxophonists Stan and Eddie Lockjaw Davis, and Buddy Rich and Dutch Swing Call bands, bring a breath of the outside jazz world to Dublin in the next month. The unusual Distel/Kessel pairing plays the National Concert on Sunday, March 5. Stan Getz turns to Dublin after less than a year, but this time to the Olympia (March 27), and this time with the magnificent George Mraz on bass. Davis, W wanders the world without a group will be backed by a local trio, Killiney Court on Saturday, April 2 just three years since he played in Gresham on a memorable, steaming night. The DSC (NCH, March 14) Buddy Rich (NCH, April 5) are return visitors.