Guinness Cork Jazz Festival reviews: Andy Sheppard and Portico Quartet 

 Andy Sheppard (left) and his East Coast band performing at the Triskel for Guinness Cork Jazz Festival. Picture: Naoise Culhane 

The quartet is a staple and well-established unit in jazz, an improvisational equivalent of the string quartet in classical music. As with the classic and epoch-defining John Coltrane Quartet of the early to mid-sixties, and Keith Jarrett’s majestic and influential American and Scandinavian quartets of the seventies, it involves a lead instrument player, usually a saxophonist or pianist, often both, plus a rhythm section of bass and drums. Its strength and vitality lies in a solid, stable yet open structure: a good jazz quartet is like a four-square room without walls, in which each player can move freely inside and outside its parameters.

English saxophonist and composer Andy Sheppard’s new four-piece band, East Coast, which played a sold-out show at Triskel Christchurch on Sunday evening, perfectly embodied these sometimes elusive qualities. Featuring Sheppard on tenor and soprano, John Parricelli on guitar, Dudley Phillips on bass and Mário Costa on drums, the quartet presented two sets of music full of keen listening, clever interplay and good old-fashioned fun.