Honed and practised

Jan Garbarek in Cardiff, enjoyed by REX HARLEY

The final leg of Jan Garbarek's European tour, which has him zig-zagging across the UK, brought him to the St David's Hall in Cardiff, Wales, on Thursday 18 November 2004; and any thoughts that the musicians might be jaded by this stage were quickly put to flight. By now, of course, they know each other pretty well. Rainer Bruninghaus and Eberhard Weber have been regulars in the group for nearly twenty years, and Marilyn Mazur for over a decade. So they're tuned in to each other's thinking.

The concert was typical of the almost obsessively self-effacing Norwegian. Not a word was spoken, not even to announce the pieces by name. The audience becomes the congregation witnessing a performance so honed and practised as to have become a form of ritual. Yet within this set form the space exists for each soloist to explore and improvise. Some of Garbarek's compositions have themes which are drawn from folk song and, even when this isn't actually the case, the feeling is rarely one of jazz in the North American sense.

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