Last night I went with my friend Simon to hear Jan Garbarek at the Royal Northern College of Music. I don't like to spoil a party, so I'll keep this short. The place was packed out to the very last seat; there was even extra seating in between what would normally be the front row and the stage. And the assembled gathering clearly loved what they heard. But for me it was a gig of two halves. I think the problem - maybe my problem - is identified here:
His implicitly idiosyncratic style is unmistakably original, incorporating influences from the folk cultures of many countries, including his native Norway.That's just it. The first three numbers, all extremely long and episodic in structure, were to me like jazz with the jazz surgically removed: here tuneful, there like music for a travelogue, here eccentric, there a good swinging passage but too brief to make up for the rest. I was ready to write it off as just not being my kind of thing, when with the fourth and final piece the band played something recognizably connecting to what I know as the core of the music, of the tradition - a terrific, upbeat number with a genuine jazz soul. They then came back for a lovely, sort of Latin jazz, encore. So I left in a 'six of one, half a dozen of the other' frame of mind.