Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork
The reviewer of a Tord Gustavsen concert is likely to think of his every word as Samuel Beckett might: “unnecessary stains on the silence”. Although in the case of Gustavsen it’s not silence being stained so much as a soundscape of subtlety and intricate grace.
As is so often the case during the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival, the Everyman was a three-day tribute to the piano in jazz. Robert Glasper threw dissonant notes together like Gershwin in the more frenetic passages of Rhapsody in Blueonly to resolve them into looped chords that A Tribe Called Quest would have been proud to sample. The English-as-a-pub-lunch Neil Cowley Trio let us imagine what jazz might have been like if it was invented in Blighty. Alan Broadbent showed the telepathic benefits of 25 years worth of playing with Charlie Haden's astounding Quartet West, while Jason Moran layered rap lyrics from Ghostface Killah over his fast-fingered New York style.
But while those acts diligently served the rich American jazz tradition, Gustavsen's ensemble, in probably the finest performance of the festival, remained true to their origins in Norway, evoking the folk music of the Scandinavian mountains at their most obviously tuneful, as in Playing. But even at such moments it came back to Gustavsen's piano.
Solo seems the wrong word for these meditations that peppered the performance. Every note was an island, pristine in its isolation until Gustavsen summoned a rumbling, undulating crescendo of sound to set the melody off again. And then you realised how special this group is: every note is given breathing space; nothing is forced. And yet, reading that description it's easy to imagine the most austere free jazz – but the Gustavsen ensemble never sacrifices melody. It's always there, even when whispered. You hear it breathing down Tore Brunborg's gentle sax, in Mats Eilersten's often eerie bass sounds, or in the flirtation with silence that is Jarle Vespestad's drumming. In a set full of lullabies from the latest album, Restored, Returned, the audience experienced no lulls in quality, and was lulled not so much to sleep, but into a delicate sound-world of spare beauty and depth.
For the second half of this double bill it was time for something completely different. By the time Omar Sosa began chanting “Africa! Africa!” after a keyboard workout that evoked a world of music, we were certainly not in Norway anymore. What followed from Sosa and band was a tour through African, Caribbean and jazz music conducted with supreme grace, energy and good humour.
The performance was a marvel in the way its music found a space for thumb pianos, bird callers and all other manner of African instruments without ever seeming gimmicky. The Afreecanos married the joyful exuberance of world music with a beguiling discipline. The result was music of great complexity delivered with a smile.
