// Bourbon Street Jazz Trio + guests. Live review, ardhowen theatre, gallery bar, enniskillen, fermanagh.
Given that jazz is a global music and thrives everywhere with the crucial help of good promotion, education, and support by councils, funding bodies and audiences, it is worth remembering when jazz comes to town it can be as exciting as the circus. It is better however when the circus decides to stick around as much as possible and the jugglers continue to juggle, the acrobats leap and dazzle.
Suddenly something comes along by the name of the Bourbon Street Jazz Trio. And well before the Celtic new year into the bargain. I will quote lines from the song of the same Samhain referencing period written by Ireland's greatest living jazz musician Van Morrison: “If I don’t see you when I’m going down Louisiana/If I don’t see you when I’m down on Bourbon Street.”
2018 has been a great year so far for jazz in terms of the wider public with a mindblowing lost Coltrane album, upcoming the startling never released before Mønk, Get the Blessing back on form, splendid albums from Evan Parker and Dave Holland to name but a few and yep a brilliant Kamasi Washington album, and not to forget Van’s hard blowing collaboration with Joey DeFrancesco on You’re Driving Me Crazy plus a new scene stocked full of young players busting Stateside out of London, via Birmingham spearheaded by Shabaka and the Kemets, Soweto (‘Jazz Planet’) Kinch and from sarf London rippling all over the metropolis and far beyond the meta Nérija scene.
Local pride kindles a belief that music begins and ends in playing for people and where the heart is. I had popped into the Erneside comets’ Bourbon Street Jazz Trio “social music” gig debut some months back in a small cafe not expecting anything much but wishing to show some willing. The trio, there is no real obvious leader or bassist although the pianist fulfils that latter function overtly when he uses organ settings if he has a keyboard with a plug to hand, are a guitarist, Rory Gill, pianist Timmy Boomer and drummer Luke Beirne. Rory was taught by Mike Walker of the Impossible Gentlemen among his tutors at the recent Sligo Jazz Project.
Three became five here on this occasion with the addition of Belfast scene bassist Jack Kelly last heard playing at the Brilliant Corners festival in March in the band of guitarist Joseph Leighton and a singer unknown to me, unbilled, Stefie, not sure how she spells her first name, Cassidy who impressed most singing ‘Body and Soul’ in Spanish which was a rare treat and she handled the ultimate jazz ballad, since Coleman Hawkins’ days usually a feature for tenor saxophonists of course, very well.
The highlight of the gig was a newly arranged version of saxophonist composer Meilana Gillard’s tender ‘Identity’ and a romp through Herbie Hancock’s ‘Chameleon’. Luke Beirne came into his own best here. Most drummers newcomers or old hands alike cannot play the Harvey Mason part, it goes without saying, but we forget the complexity of it all given how technically proficient many young teenage players are these days. Boomer nailed it too more to the point. They know where the one is and can navigate the swirl of polyrhythms as a band. Hendersonian Meilana Gillard was a Sligo tutor and appeared at the stellar opener “Ladies of Jazz” concert alongside Liane Carroll, Emilia Mårtensson, Shannon Barnett, and Sara Colman. SG.