Live music: Arve Henriksen - Triskel, Cork (ECM Weekend)

4/5

The evocative and atmospheric music released by acclaimed German record label ECM has been famously described as “the most beautiful sound next to silence”.

At the beginning of this memorable Saturday night double bill, part of Triskel’s inaugural weekend celebration of the label and some of its musicians, the breathy and delicately controlled solo phrases of Norwegian trumpeter Arve Henriksen were accompanied not just by Christchurch’s stillness and soaring sense of space — but briefly by the distant sounds of festive singing in adjacent Bishop Lucey Park. “It’s Christmas,” said Henriksen, at the end of his first piece.

In fact, for lovers of an adventurous independent label that seems to have effortlessly embraced jazz, classical, early and world music, and their many unclassifiable intersections, and forged a striking and instantly recognisable aesthetic of uncompromising quality and cool restraint, it was all their Christmases rolled into one. As well as headline concerts, there were ECM films, fringe events, and even, at the nearby River Lee Hotel, a free ‘after hours’ festival club.

Throughout his hour-long set, Henriksen crafted sounds on trumpet, keyboards, electronics and vocals that could have been the very definition of ECM: individual, idiosyncratic, most of all visual, filmic. This was music to be transported by, music that took you on a journey.

Food, the duo of English saxophonist Iain Ballamy and Norwegian drummer and ‘live-electronics’ player Thomas Stronen, further expanded such soundscapes. Backed by a film showing images such as snow falling on trees, the music moved organically through many moods, from bucolic to industrial, turbulent to lyrical. And from haunting to humorous, too — especially after former Food member Henriksen had joined the pair for a finale.

“Wasn’t Arve just something else,” said a buoyant Tony Sheehan, artistic director of the Triskel, to the audience at one point in the evening.

Arve was. And so, rather brilliantly, was this vibrant ECM Weekend.