Conor Guilfoyle Octet - Miles Davis Centenary - Arthurs

Conor Guilfoyle Octet - Miles Davis Centenary - Arthurs

Words: Billy O’Hanluain

Celebrations of Miles Davis’s centenary got well under way in Arthurs tonight as drummer extraordinaire and Irish jazz archivist Conor Guilfoyle led an octet featuring some of Ireland’s finest musicians through a programme of arrangements of two seminal albums by Davis, “Birth of the Cool” and “Kind of Blue”. 

Both albums and the solos on each are as familiar to jazz aficionados as classic movie dialogue might be to  cinephiles, so, it takes a special ingredient to make the possibly over familiar sound fresh and shine anew, and that came in the form of Marty Paich’s imaginative arrangements of this evergreen material. 

From the opening call and response salvo of Davis’s “So What”, a sure candidate for the most iconic intro in recorded jazz, the octet shone with swagger, punch, and discipline. Trumpeter Bill Blackmore rose to the occasion with aplomb, playing the first few bars of Miles’s instantly recognisable solo then ran with brilliantly crafted ideas of his own. There is little point, no matter how well loved they are, in replicating note for note solos from seminal albums, that’d be a slide into tribute band territory, a trap this octet wisely avoided. Instead, the band offered the musical equivalent of seeing a very familiar view shot from an unexpected angle, a shot that floods the familiarity with surprise, and that’s jazz at its best. 

Trombonist Paul Dunlea has a technique that conceals any traces of labour, his ability to conjure rapid lines of hard swinging melody seems as effortless as it is intricate. His duelling with baritone player Kelan Walsh was a pugilistic highlight of the night. Walsh’s playing has an intense physicality that manages at once to channel the spirit of Gerry Mulligan while being true to himself. 

Guilfoyle deserves acclaim for assembling this band and preserving and reinvigorating this music.