The top CD of the week reviewed

Togetherness LIving room project****

Too often Irish jazz groups are ad hoc gatherings, with all the limitations this implies; it’s in the nature of the music’s economics. But this quartet goes about its business in a way that happens only when the chemistry is right, the players are fully engaged and the hours together have been put in.

And the results justify the work. To begin with, Michael Buckley (tenor) and Justin Carroll (piano), both frontline soloists, are in exceptional form. Consistent brilliance has been the Buckley norm for years. For Carroll (who wrote all the material), however, things seem to have come together at an altogether new level, as his work on Ronan Guilfoyle’s Métier group CD, Cascade, showed last year and as his even better work here confirms.

In the rhythm section Simon Jermyn (electric bass) continues to impress, a rock-solid yet flexible harmonic and rhythmic fulcrum for the others. The gifted Seán Carpio (drums), meanwhile, an intuitive colourist as well as fulfilling his other duties, combines with him to make a near-perfect pair for this quartet.

Over a programme of originals, Carroll develops complex lines – and rhythmic and harmonic opportunities – with considerable ingenuity and imagination, often from relatively uncomplicated bases. Arguably, despite his deftness as a writer, a programme as intensely focused and complex as this could have benefited from more light and shade.

That said, the quartet’s individual and collective imagination is obviously set loose by his pieces, with perhaps only one performance, Pointless Exercise, sounding as if the shape of the material dominates it.

Elsewhere it's a different story. In a welter of authoritative performances, their cogent work on 3 Dot Syndrome, Outside the Box, Vintage Gear, By the Reedsand A Little Stockis proof that Togethernesscan stamp their mark on a repertoire that asks as much of them technically as it does imaginatively. www.living roomproject.com