Reviews

Jazz album: Bruce Barth

Although he’s on the sunny side of 55, American pianist Bruce Barth could be described as a veteran. With 13 albums as a band leader under his belt and credits on more than 100 recordings, this latest album ranks as one of his finest.

Originally from Pasadena in California he left the sunshine of the Golden State in his late teens to further his academic career at New England Conservatory in Boston before heading to New York in 1988. While there he quickly began to generate his own post-bop heat and has been steadily delighting audiences with his sparkling virtuosity.

Joining Barth on this studio session is Steve Nelson (vibes), Vincente Archer (bass), Montez Coleman, (drums) and Terell Stafford (trumpet and flugelhorn) and while the ensemble create some memorable magic it will be, for many listeners, the super sounds of Stafford’s horns that stand out.

Of the 10 tunes that comprise this collection, seven are penned by Barth. The others are the opener ‘Triste’ by Antonio Carlos Jobim, where Barth adds a little energy and enthusiasm to what is in essence a melancholic Brazilian bossa number. Bringing up the rear is the penultimate number, Cole Porter’s ‘In The Still of the Night’ where Barth and his band ease down just a little and get into a relaxed swing which is the perfect segue to Terell Stafford and the pianist’s interpretation of Keith Jarrett’s ‘So Tender’.

One of the album’s highlights is ‘Tuesday’s Blues’; a Barth composition where Stafford’s bluesy and ballsy horn beautifully complements the understated vibes of Nelson. This is followed by the longest tune on the album, the wonderfully upbeat and ebullient ‘Vamonos’ in which Nelson’s vibes conjure up a Caribbean soundscape before Stafford takes the tune back creating a live club-like feel. Barth shows his chops and drives on in a pedal to the metal fashion.

Should you find yourself awake counting sheep in the small hours, Daybreak should keep you going til, well, daybreak. Well worth a spin.

Star Rating: 4/5

Art: Deception & Sacrifice

CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery, Cork

By Marc O’Sullivan

Deception & Sacrifice’s subtitle, ‘The Lion, The Bear & The Fox,’ is a reference to the fable its contributors were asked to use as inspiration. The fable recounts how a lion and a bear battled over who would kill and eat a fawn. They fought so fiercely that both collapsed, and a fox snuck in and seized the fawn — the moral being that ‘those who have all the toil do not always have the profit’.

Curated by Sylvia Taylor and Valerie Byrne, Deception & Sacrifice features work by 13 Irish and 13 American printmakers. It’s a lively and intelligent exhibition that pushes the contributors to explore the possibilities of print. Some provide literal interpretations of the fable, while others scarcely pay it heed.

Aoife Layton’s mezzotint has the fawn out front, in a woodland clearing: the creature is as endangered by viewers of the artwork as by predators skulking in the background. Johnny Bugler’s screenprint, ‘The Banker’, features a fox got up in an elegant, 19th century suit. He has a well-fed belly and his hands are sunk smugly in his pockets. Randy Bolton also favours allegory: his screenprint features a house-shaped billboard that has the legend, ‘Your future is secure with us’, a claim undermined by the image beneath it of a bear chasing two children and a deer.

Some of the most effective images are simplicity itself. Noelle Noonan’s silkscreen ‘Black Heart’ has a locket hanging ominously on the left, while the shadow of a deer — inverted, as if strung up in death — fills the field behind. Minna Resnick’s lithograph ‘A Mother’s Call Resounds in All Directions’ takes its title from a book of Chinese proverbs: the top half features a girl’s smiling eyes, while the image below is of a forlornly empty boat in an ocean. It is arguable which image is grimmer: Jo Kelley’s silkscreen ‘No Birds in the Hand’, which features a woman lying dying, or dreaming, while predatory crows flock around her bed; or Michelle Martin’s etching ‘Infirmity’ — an allusion to the healthcare system in America — which depicts masked figures tending to an ailing woman lying on the forest floor.

Star Rating: 4/5