A sense of wonder swirls all around. In spiritual Sligo it’s inspiring. Sitting in the stalls of the Hawk’s Well, a theatre named after a Yeats play a stone’s throw from the town’s main thoroughfare O’Connell Street, you think of the great music that has been performed right here along the street from the cathedrals.
Playing Sligo for the first time after her Music Network promoted Irish tour opened in the north-west Donegal town of Letterkenny last night English saxophonist Emma Rawicz playing tenor and soprano saxophones arrives in Ireland in the wake of her new duo album Big Visit with pianist Gwilym Simcock, no stranger to Sligo audiences, who played this very spot with the Impossible Gentlemen at the Sligo Jazz Project which celebrates its 20th anniversary in July and is launched next week at Lillie’s with Ant Law and Brigitte Beraha.
On tour the saxist is with pianist Elliot Galvin, 6 string bass guitarist Kevin Glasgow and Soft Machine drummer Asaf Sirkis.
They played two sets punctuated by a short interval. Rawicz, who graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in London last year, dressed in a long black dress and flat black brogues, told the audience it was a “real treat” to play in Sligo. Openers were ‘Quirky’ and ‘The Oak Tree’, long numbers that saw the saxist choose tenor initially which is really her forte rather than soprano later although her straight horn work drew out tricky chromatic accidentals and eked out more emotion in the higher precincts of the sound.
Polite and articulate in audience chats she expressed her admiration for English jazz musicians trumpeter Laura Jurd and pianist Nikki Iles, again no stranger to Sligo audiences, and introduced the band.
Metrically ambitious, the style is progressive jazz-rock. Tunes, all Rawicz’s whose writing is the match of her virtuosic Wayne Shorter-esque sax playing, were complex but communicative.
She showed her power when improvisations reached a natural climax but could do tender asides well and allowed room particularly in the second set for Glasgow to add some jaw dropping unshowy rocket science funkiness on his 6-string.
Highlights included her birthday present to her father a ballad called ‘Middle Ground’ and a terrific piece she wrote when tasked by her teacher at the Academy to write a tune based on a standard you weren’t supposed to be able to detect – “and we did it,” (nevertheless) she quipped with a grin – called ‘Rebecca.’
- The tour continues tonight in Roscommon. Tomorrow it’s Tinahely. Then Dublin on Tuesday; Listowel, Wednesday night; Cork, Thursday. Newbridge – Friday.
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