One characteristic, above all others, which distinguishes the best improvising musicians from their more mundane counterparts in the mainstream jazz, is their unrelenting impatience to be with the next challenge. No player better exemplifies this than the exultantly nonconformist guitarist, Derek Bailey. Now aged 70, he has in recent years tangled with Japanese hardcore band The Ruins; opened corrosive interventions in the drum `n' bass tracks of DJ Ninj and engaged in numerous provocative encounters with musicians as different as Cecil Taylor and Pat Metheny.
In Cork, where he finally made his Irish debut, he faced the most challenging situation for any improviser: playing solo, "a manic dialogue with the phantom other", as he once described it. His playing displayed a total control of dynamics, minutely adjusting the sound of a single note or letting it ring with bell-like clarity. At times he became absorbed in potentially lyrical details which were soon dissipated by grinding shards of clustered notes that had their own distorted beauty.
Having played three solo pieces each sent on its way with a derisive, dismissive comment - he put on a tape to allow interaction with a real, if inflexible other, in this case two dance tracks and a composition by drummer Max Roach, over which he played parallel improvisations, constant in their abstracted glory. His stubborn, clotted tumult remains one of the essential energies of improvised music, or any music. Those who value indeterminate adventure should try to be at Renards in Dublin when he plays there tonight.
