Reviews of Hazmat Modineand Renée Anne Louprette(organ)

Hazmat Modine

Mermaid Theatre Bray, Co Wicklow

A B-flat tuba, commandeered from the Blackrock Garda Band, was the final piece of the puzzle that presaged Hazmat Modine’s blistering and raucous Irish debut last Saturday night. Lost luggage, even when it involves a hard-to-miss tuba, did little to deter this seven-piece rollercoaster from revelling in the delights of their Irish debut.

New Yorker Wade Schuman’s brainchild, Hazmat (hazardous materials) Modine (hijacking the name of a commercial heater manufacturer) does exactly what it says (albeit obliquely) on the tin: concoct combustible music that draws unapologetically from a disparate range of influences, including klezmer, bawdy blues, funk, freebasing jazz and infectious dance. This is music as loose-limbed as it gets, shot through with a sly and irreverent wit that’s all too rare a commodity in these dark days.

Schuman has perfected an engaging yowling vocal style that ricochets deliriously between castrato and tenor, one minute conjuring memories of Odetta, the next veering precipitously close to Big Bill Broonzy terrain – and then slides neatly beneath the soaring arcs of his harmonica. At his best when duelling furiously with what Schuman deemed the "profoundly creative and strange" harmonica player, Bill Barrett, the pair made out like two tom cats on a hot tin roof, advancing and retreating through the zesty Who Walks In When I Walk Out?and the languorous Broke My Baby's Heart.

Hazmat Modine's palette runs the gamut of tuba, trombone, saxophone, dobro, bass and harmonica, with Schuman's vocals playing an almost incidental role in the mix. What matters most is the soul of the music and this was something that Schuman was convinced his small but perfectly formed audience had by the bucket-load (whether we had any rhythm was a whole other question). His Waitsean tendency to look at the world askance proved an ideally skewed perspective for a crowd who inhaled Modine's feral concoction with glee. World music never felt so otherworldly. SIOBHÁN LONG

Hazmat Modine play Kilkenny Arts Festival on August 13th

Renée Anne Louprette (organ)

St Michael’s, Dún Laoghaire

Buxtehude – Praeludium in D minor BuxWV140. Böhm – Vater unser im Himmelreich. Capriccio in D. Frescobaldi – Recercar Cromatico post il Credo. Ligeti – Ricercare. Bach – Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV543. Dies sind die heiligen zehn Gebot BWV678. Mendelssohn – Sonata in B flat Op 65 No 4.

Renée Anne Louprette, associate director of music at the Church of St Ignatius Loyola in New York, made her début in the organ series at St Michael’s, Dún Laoghaire on Sunday.

She presented herself as a communicative player with no shortage of imaginative ideas, with fingers fully capable of backing them up, and with feet which are not just nimble on the pedals, but every bit as expressively articulate as her fingers.

The feet first dazzled at the end of a thrusty performance of Buxtehude’s Praeludium in D minor, BuxWV140. She followed this with a contrasted pair of works by Georg Böhm (1661-1733), and then a pairing that crossed the centuries.

The Recercar Cromatico post il Credofrom Girolamo Frescobaldi's Fiori Musicaliof 1635 and the 30-year-old György Ligeti's homage to Frescobaldi, his Ricercare of 1953, are united by their extreme chromaticism and also their fondness for spiralling shapes, which clash in ways that Louprette captured with a sense of energised relish.

Her coupling of two works by Bach offered the Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV543, in a performance of impressive sportiness, and the chorale prelude Dies sind die heiligen zehn Gebotin a reading of stately calmness that communicated a sense of unutterable richness in the complexity of its counterpoint.

For all its bustle and brio, the fourth of Mendelssohn's six organ sonatas came as something of an anti-climax after the Bach. On the evidence of this performance, mid 19th-century sweetness would not seem to be as close to Louprette's heart as the earlier and later music of this impressive recital. MICHAEL DERVAN