ECM at Triskel review: Cork venue perfect for chamber jazz sounds of leading label
Elina Duni on stage at Triskel for the series of ECM concerts at Guinness Cork Jazz Festival.
Picture: Darragh Kane
Triskel’s Christchurch venue lends itself to a certain kind of music. Chamber jazz you could call it. Contemplative, atmospheric music that gives more attention to tone and colour than to swing, and which draws as much on European classical music as American improvisational tradition.
You could argue it’s almost an architectural embodiment of the values of Manfred Eicher’s ECM records. Little wonder then, that this is the 10th year the venue has dedicated a day to artists from that venerated label.
“It’s getting harder and harder to do jazz music,” says Triskel director Tony Sheehan as he opens the day’s playing and listening with a nod to the 2025 theme: debating the content of this year’s jazz festival programme. “But we are not going to give up.”
Fitting then, perhaps that we begin with the embodiment of staying power: the London singer , whose voice at 84 is remarkably clear and expressive. She appears here with her long-time collaborator, the Italian pianist Glauco Venier for a selection of self-written songs and interpretations on standards and pop tunes.
The boldness of her vision is most apparent in an unrhymed poem set to spare piano that comes across as a Leonard Cohen-like diary of heartbreak. By contrast, her take on the Harry Nilsson song made famous by evolves into a bright and playfully improvised number, with Venier’s quick-fingered piano becoming strident as Winstone deftly conjures scatting syllables.
The tour of her back catalogue continues with perhaps a dangerous sentiment in Cork, but the weather gods appeared not to be listening.
A song in Friulian follows; the vulgar Latin language from Venier’s northern Italy is jokingly explained by the pianist as useful, in the way Irish would have been for the discussion of anglophone colonisers.
Winstone’s method of writing her own lyrics to others’ tunes is exemplified by one of her best-known works, a reworking of Jimmy Rowles’ into a story of impossible love. “That was a bit of fun,” she says, in her winning, thoroughly unpretentious and self-deprecating way. She’s not wrong.
Next up at Triskel was a trio yet to be immortalised in the recording studio: the Swiss pianist is joined on flugelhorn by his compatriot Matthieu Michel, and the renowned Spanish drummer Jorge Rossy, best known for his work with Brad Mehldau. It’s a strong lineup, and one that does not disappoint.
We open with an achingly beautiful solo from Vallon, with the raspy whispering horn from Michel embellishing the theme of this traditional Turkish tune. In Vallon’s hands, it’s sometimes as if the trio becomes a quartet, as he modifies the piano with objects laid across the strings, or by plucking, scraping, tapping or sawing at them. Thus, he adds bass and string sounds in surprising ways, often while deftly continuing at the keyboard one-handed.
A reworking of the French composer Gabriel Faure’s is as beautiful as it is almost unrecognisable. But it still lives up to its name, “the cradles”, in the hands of these remarkable musicians.
Matthieu Michel returned to the stage for the final show of the day. He joined the for a selection of songs that featured everything from French pop to Albanian folk, ancient Arabic, and standards like you’ve never heard them. Corrie Dick completes the lineup on drums.
Luft’s Bill Fressel-like guitar playing often sets the tone: gently amplified lines given Duni space to deploy her full vocal range. Irving Berlin’s is recognised more by the lyrics than the tune in this approach. Similarly, there’s nothing familiar at all about the way Duni sings “I’ll be seeing you in all the familiar places,” somehow managing to sing those words and not make one immediately think of Billie Holiday’s canonical version.
After an 800-year-old Arabic song is rendered a prose poem of romantic longing, the last thing one expected was a jaunty and cute version of Serge Gainsbourg’s which has the band chiming in on vocals for the chorus, and adding grooves hitherto unheard in the show. Perhaps they are too sparse with that kind of all-out swing during this performance, but it’s impossible not to leave with a smile on your face and a tune stuck in your head after that.
