Pharos, Silfra, Whirlwind

A presidential kind of listen – presidential in an Irish sense as the race for the Áras hots up and some wannabes fall by the wayside. You feel as if you arrived in the middle of something absorbing and competitive going on. But of course this isn’t politics. And no one here is a wannabe. There isn’t a Lester Young theme, the Pres of jazz globally still even from beyond the grave! But trombonist Paul Dunlea, a retired member of the Irish armed forces Óglaigh na hÉireann, is a kind of jazz pres in his own way. There’s no tedious warming up when you arrive at the first track ‘Frongoch’ which has an Irish revolutionary and civil war era reference in its titling. Frongoch was the name of the Welsh internment camp where those captured in the 1916 Rising were sent by the British.

The work of Pharos: the Corkonian Dunlea a pater familias of the Crane Lane Theatre Monday jams in Cork City & fellow player the English trombonist Trevor Mires known for his work with Incognito clearly understand each other’s musical directions very well indeed like brothers from another mother.

**Pharos – l-r Billy Kilson, Jim Ridl, Ike Sturm, Paul Dunlea and Trevor Mires at Van Gelder’s in New Jersey. Photo: Whirlwind on Bandcamp**

This is bustling straight to the glasshouse post hard bop original music. It’s not latinate in feel like what Conrad Herwig does. Nor is it virtue signalling avant. But what’s here in an adjacent idiom is just as technically strong and convincing and ideas strewn as anything set out elsewhere to be self-consciously avant-garde. Conversely it’s not at all a complacent stroll down memory lane either if, looking to knock, that’s what you are thinking.

The leaders are heard along with double bassist Ike Sturm, a long time music director for the Manhattan church St. Peter’s, pianist Jim Ridl (known for his work with Joe Locke and Pat Martino) and the incendiary jazz rock fusion drummer Billy Kilson. In addition a third advanced trombone player innovative US jazzer Ryan Keberle figures on some tracks.

The retired sergeant’s 4 Corners band heard by this blog just before Lockdown at Magy’s Farm in County Down found Dunlea in a band that included Whirlwind label head bassist Michael Janisch playing music for Dunlea’s Irish revolutionary period themed concept composition suite that was dotted piquantly with spoken word. Sturm is quite Janisch-like.

And Kilson is an incredibly natural player and contributes hugely to ‘Cypher Nutria’ which was a track of the week in these pages in July and is one of a number of very strong tracks. The track has a strong buoyant feel to it where robust trombone work is elaborated upon by some vibrant soloing from Ridl.

‘Saoirse’ – Irish for “freedom” – means something literally, symbolically and metaphorically in this context. Freedom may in the words of the Kris Kristofferson song ‘Me and Bobby McGee’ be just another word for nothing left to lose. But isn’t that “justness” what jazz is fundamentally about on a number of levels wherever you are in the world. It’s kept in the foreground of the thinking here on a stimulating set of tunes. The title track itself proves tender as the night but all the players here refuse to take sentimental short cuts or provide easy solutions that in lesser hands would dilute the impact of the ideas.