If, as Scott Fitzgerald suggested, there are no second acts in American lives, what about second sets? A capacity audience in Vicar Street on Sunday to hear the great bassist, Charlie Haden's Quartet West - part of the ESB Jazz series in association with Note Productions - was clearly bemused when it realised that what seemed like the conclusion of a longish first set turned out to be the end of the concert.
With singer Ruth Cameron, a replacement for Bill Henderson, also ill and unable to appear - and bearing in mind the high cost of tickets for the paying punters - quite a few must have felt short-changed, if not on quality, then certainly on quantity.
That said, there was no doubt about the standard of jazz provided by this high-calibre and long-established group, even if, for much of the time, they seemed content to play within their considerable capacities. Haden is an extraordinarily gifted bassist, with a beautiful, rounded tone, impeccable intonation, a wealth of ideas and an impeccable sense of time; his solos on the second and third pieces, both unidentified, one at medium tempo, the other a ballad, were notable examples of his talent.
The brilliant pianist, Alan Broadbent, who was once under the spell of Bill Evans, offered a kind of compendium of jazz piano influences, extending from orthodox bop through Phineas Newborn unison passages to one-time avant gardist Lennie Tristano. On tenor, Ernie Watts was as comfortable with bop or Coltrane as he was going outside, while drummer Larance Marable, apart from an overlong demonstration of his technique on one number, epitomised taste and restraint.
Enjoyable though the music was, with Broadbent and Watts consistently good and excellent group interaction - the encore, a disguised Body and Soul, was typically accomplished - there was little sense of the kind of adventure of which the group is capable. Until, that is, they ventured into the deceptive simplicities of Ornette Coleman's Lonely Woman for the most unbridled and inventive playing of the night, with Broadbent's mixture of influences superbly deployed and a tenor solo of imagination and daring.
