The new series of the ESB Routes in Rhythm got off to an impressive start at Vicar Street on Thursday with the commingling of Irish, Indian and jazz represented by the Karnataka College of Percussion and Khanda.
Presented by the Improvised Music Company, both the KCP and Khanda have had links in the past, most recently during their tour in India. Their performance here underlined the essential universality of music behind the cultural diversity of its conception and expression.
The opening Indian elements came from T.A.S. Mani on mridangam, a kind of horizontal bongo, but much more tonally sophisticated, Ramesh Shotam on ghatam and morsing, one gourd-like, the other not unlike the mrindangam, and R.A. Ramamani, a superb singer who used the Karnatic rhythmic language with a delicacy and subtlety of ornamental restraint that was breathtaking.
They split the opening set with Khanda - Martin Nolan (pipes/whistles), Ellen Cranitch (flutes), Ronan Guilfoyle (bass), Peter Browne (accordeon), Tommy Halferty (guitar) and Conor Guilfoyle (drums).
All this, however, was a savoury prelude to the evening's main course, in which the KCP and Khanda joined to present a suite, 5 Cities, which was both a collective triumph for them and an individual one for Ronan Guilfoyle, its composer.
In it he effected a genuine marriage of its Indian, Irish and jazz elements, bringing them together in an extraordinary way and producing something which was fresh, absorbing and beautiful.
These gifted musicians showed how much they had absorbed the complexities and demands placed on them. The suite itself showed Guilfoyle's mastery of writing for ensembles of this size, whether in contemporary jazz mode or in this field of crosscultural encounter. A night to remember.