Big houses, generally good jazz, some of it of a profoundly high standard, and one major disappointment, were the component parts of the just-completed four-day extended Guinness Jazz Weekend, slotted into the Belfast Festival at Queen's. There is a quality that is elegiac, almost prayerful, about the music of Abdullah Ibrahim, the South African pianist who brought an accomplished pianist Belden Bulloch and drummer George Gray to the festival. A man with a wonderfully expressive face and bearing, his music carries similar qualities.
He played two sets in the Elmwood Hall on Friday, and essentially what we heard were two uninterrupted, introspective suites of great power, beauty and oddly calming intensity. There were traces of the compositional genius of Duke Ellington and the quirky surprise of Thelonious Monk, and all the time a sense of space and a sense of Africa. Through the pure, graceful flow of music we heard black spiritual, dark blues, urgent dissonance, reflective emotion, some stride piano, some music to a marching beat, and throughout an adherence to engrossing melody and lovely phrasing - the highlight of the weekend.
Not far behind in terms of sheer quality was the Dave Brubeck quartet in the Whitla Hall on Sunday night. There's always been a question mark over whether the classical element to his music undermines his capacity to swing, but pianist Brubeck, a few weeks short of his 78th birthday, and his band, particularly saxist and flautist Bobby Militella, certainly swung on Sunday. And this, as he told us, after a month of one-nighters in Europe. We got Take Five, taken with fresh vigour, and some vintage stuff (but no Blue Rondo), but it was his new compositions - some actually written on the tour - offered with wit, flourish and verve, that particularly impressed. There was some gorgeous-toned sax from Derry reedsman Gay McIntyre who opened the Brubeck concert. John McLaughlin is indeed a fine guitarist but he needs to re-establish Brubeck's spark. Judging by the Heart of Things six-piece he fronted on Thursday he appears musically lost somewhere in the no-man's land between free jazz and the antiquated self-indulgent progressive rock of the late 1960s, early 1970s.
What we got was minor jazz baroque: ornate and extravagant, but substantially short of the real thing. McLaughlin left most of the work to his band, particularly to the drummer Denis Chambers, percussionist Victor Williams and bass guitarist Matthew Garrison, who were loud and heavy, and, er, that's it, as they say in Private Eye. The floor in the Whitla Hall actually vibrated with the rhythmic pounding.
The musicians would probably class themselves as free spirits, but even in free jazz, some coherence or discipline is expected. The very few ideas that the musicians had were thrashed into submission. McLaughlin with his back to the audience (now there's an old rock affectation) coasted along, playing only a couple of short solos.
American saxist Joe Lovano occupies the same territory as McLaughlin, experimenting, improvising, searching. The difference is that he has inventiveness. I last saw him in Cork a couple of years ago when, with his wife, he created anarchic and explosive jazz.
Whatever demons drove him then were somewhat quieted in Belfast. We heard the exciting, blistering hard boppish attack that is now synonymous with Lovano, but also present was a greater restraint and consequently a deeper passion. One slow moody piece, Sanctuary Park, from a new suite, was particularly soulful.
His rhythm section, Cameron Brown on double bass, Idris Muhammed on drums were New York cool: neat and assured. Whether in fast flight or in the tender moments the interplay between the three musicians was pure pleasure.
The cheerful surprise of the jazz event was New York pianist Geri Allen, generally unknown this side of the Atlantic, who with drummer Ralph Penland and bassist Ralphe Armstrong, played a concert of creative drive and emotion.
She dedicated her composition, Feed the Fire to the late jazz vocalist Betty Carter. Delivered with pace and rhythmic punch, the notes tumbling after and over each other, she managed to conjure the joyful, idiosyncratic nature of Carter's scat singing. Former Art Blakey Jazz Messenger Terence Blanchard, leading a quintet on Saturday night, offered some high-quality lyrical trumpet solos. There were expressive and adroit contributions from pianist Edward Simon and saxist Mark Shim, but for some reason they didn't fully deliver on their promise. Technically brilliant but a little flat.
Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca, in what was billed as the weekend's dance event, with their Latin and African rhythms were jolly and exuberant, wrapping up a good weekend.
The remaining Belfast Festival special weekends are the Guinness Comedy Weekend (Thursday to Monday) and the Guinness Folk Weekend (Thursday 26th to Sunday 29th)
