Cork Jazz Festival reviews: Triskel was the perfect venue for jazz lovers on Saturday
Sultan Stevenson Trio with special guest Denys Baptiste in the Triskel Christchurch for the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival. Picture: Darragh Kane
Saturday at the Triskel for the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival was a three-part study in the piano trio and its potential to delight and surprise. The first surprise, indeed, was that the billed trio of Sultan Stevenson was not a trio at all, but a quartet thanks to Denys Baptiste’s addition on the saxophone. Baptise was seen in Cork in 2017, playing with Gary Crosby’s Nu Troop in a tribute to Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. And this quartet certainly has that classic feel throughout, with the 22-year-old piano sensation’s playing bringing to mind the likes of McCoy Tyner.
We open with a flowing, frenetic dialogue between Stevenson and Baptiste’s tenor sax, buoyed along by Jacob Gryn’s bass and the crash-bang of Joel Waters on the drums. There’s nothing callow in Stevenson’s playing, or his band leadership. For all this talent, he plays with admirable restraint and musicality, never attempting to steal the show with flashiness and always letting the melodies of his own compositions shine.
We see the trio on their own terms when Baptiste steps aside for the exquisite, achingly soulful introspection of He Made Me Whole Again, before Stevenson urges us to get up, dance, whoop, and holler for a rolling, crescendo-filled finale. A memorable showcase for a new talent.
It was a case of deja vu all over again with the next act, with the return of that brilliant Brazilian Amaro Freitas, who wowed the audience last year at the same venue. But have we heard enough of the man from Recife? Not by a long shot.
If Stevenson’s sound was all rich chords and melody, Freitas kicks things off in a much spikier style, picking quickly at the keys in a fast-fingered, percussive style. Stabbing Thelonius Monk-like at the piano, Freitas conjures the syncopated rhythms of the baiao music of his native north Brazil. There are catchy and deceptively simple moments, too, such as the memorable Ayeye, before more dissonance as Freitas lets loose, not just on the keys, but on the piano strings, reaching into the instrument to summon weird and wild sounds.
The Brazilian is joined by Hugo Medeiros on drums and bassist Jean Elton; together, the three switch gears with ease, their mutual understanding shining through in a delightful call-and-response, as a playful Freitas seems to challenge them to match his own dexterity. Freitas played two shows on Saturday night, so perhaps inevitably this was a more streamlined version of what his trio can do, but it was no less satisfying for that.
A simpatico with the rhythm section is, of course, the foundation of any piano trio, and for the day’s final outing that was certainly the case, as the US player Randy Ingram teamed up with Ireland’s leading sidemen, Kevin Brady on drums and Dave Redmond on bass. This is no thrown-together touring exigency, however.
As Ingram tells us, they’ve 12 years of playing behind them as a trio. It shows too, in an evening of straight-ahead tunes, played as Ingram says, at that time of the evening “when music really starts to sound good”.
There are fewer nods of agreement when Ingram asks if there are any baseball fans in the house. However, for fans of Cork hurling, his account of his team’s long drought does sound a tad familiar. It was finally broken in 2004, as the Red Sox were led to victory by David Ortiz, or Big Papi, as he and Ingram’s tribute tune are known.
In keeping with the late hour, this is a mellow, absorbing set, typified by the tuneful Like Flight, or Ingram’s “jazz dad” medley of two lullabies: his own 'Sleep Little Clark', and Thelonius Monk’s 'Little Rootie Tootie'. No fireworks here, then, just a beautiful set of tunes, with Triskel living up to its bill as a haven for listening amid the jazz weekend revelry.
