View from the Green Room: Jazz and blues kick off Waterford-Music season
The Phil Collins Quartet.
Waterford Music returns to the Large Room tonight with its first concert of the 2025-26 season.
There’s an exciting programme promised for the year. Between now and Christmas, we’ve got clarinettist John Finucane dueting with David Adams on piano later this month. Wonderful pianist Finghin Collins is here in October, while the Marmen String Quartet and Emmanuel Ceysson (harp) will perform in November.
Tonight’s concert is different because, instead of the classical concerts that Waterford-Music stage, we have the Phil Collins Quartet, a local jazz quartet, to play to the Large Room. And this quartet clearly has a strong local following because there’s a substantial audience of students filling the Large Room.
Phil Collins is originally from Wales but is now a confirmed Blah because he’s been in Waterford for over quarter of a century and he’s well-known as a jazz composer. He’s got several projects underway in the city, like Opus Pocus with its big band sound and the Waterford Jazz Weekender, which features jazz, blues, gypsy and big band swing.
Phil also teaches jazz piano, jazz history, improvisation and ensemble on the SETU music degree course.
He’s got a trio of top-class musicians with him tonight. There’s Jin Ju Jang from South Korea who could anchor any music group and Thomas Gall from Slovakia who thumps out some cool rhythms on drums. There’s also Karl Rooney from Cork who delights on sax, and who lectures in harmony and musicianship at the Cork School of Music where he founded the Pop Music degree course.
Both Jin Jan and Thomas have also had careers in academia and the quartet allows each performer the space to contribute, improvise, and interact with his fellow players.
There’s a funky feel to the concert with melodies that allow room for improvisation that travels and unravels in loops before always returning to the main tune.
Musical conversations that are deep and thoughtful spring up everywhere between the four players that always give room for individual players to create their own dynamic every time a piece is played. It gives that feeling of spontaneity and originality every time to the pieces.
There’s a thoughtful balance and a natural coherence to tonight’s playing that brings applause for the players throughout the pieces. Small quartets create their own synergy because the musicians are constantly listening to each other and together create a sense of interactive conversations to give the quartet that all together feel.
A two-hour concert of pure jazz is taxing on any audience and I would have loved to have seen a singer involved.
Waterford-Music have hit the road with an interesting and different musical experience.
