Nostalgia for locale has emerged in the music of two young jazz pianists contributing to the post Bill Evans, EST and Brad Mehldau trio style: Fergus McCreadie in Scotland and Nils Kavanagh in Ireland. Kavanagh, trained in Wales, flies the Hibernian flag. Though part-Danish, he’s from Sligo, home of mists, myths and Yeatsian mellow fruitfulness – or maybe that should be playfulness: he certainly had lots of fun tonight, with a trio that included his regular drummer, Sam Green, and guest bassist Ursula Harrison. Kavanagh was a finalist in the 2024 BBC Young Jazz Musician contest, which Harrison won. He was Young Irish Jazz Musician winner in 2022.
Kavanagh at the piano was a perky picture: bowed nose-to-keys like Evans, writhing ants-in-pants to emulate Keith Jarrett at his most gymnastic, or recoiling from the instrument before re-engagement as though it might bite back. Compare this with the urbane Green playing with understated power and grace, and Harrison, whose organisational intensity and assurance was compelling. It showed how trio playing has moved on; or, at least, rarely looked back to the era of imbalance, when the piano led and bass and drums were perimeter metronomes.
To the immemorial poetry of Sligo’s Benbulben, the mountain below which Yeats is buried in Drumcliff Churchyard, one can add dance to Kavanagh’s Irish – and, presumably, Danish – musical lexicon. Queen Maeve’s Grave, from the Kavanagh trio’s album No Expectations (the bassist for that was Marcus Baker) resurrected the spirit of the sovereign from eternal repose in Knockarea with a dance of pagan clamour. The contrast with Your Drawer, Empty, a Kavanagh chart written after someone at a gig told him that her cat, which slept in a drawer, had died the day before, confirmed that emotional reaction to events was not uniform. Harrison’s super arco bass here emphasised the tone of lamentation.
The Old House On The Hill was first a shower then a thunderstorm of sonic effects inspired by a derelict Sligo house emitting negative vibes. On For The Tired And Weary Kavanagh showed that he could do thoughtful as well as scary in a worked-up recognition of the artist (jazz pianists included) as less effective in the wider scheme of things than those who toil at the world’s front lines. It segued into and ended with the onomatopoeic ticking of Bornholmerur, a chart about a Danish grandfather clock.
By this time, the typical Kavanagh approach had become the construction of formally arc-like compositions whose direction at the start was uncertain but which typically involved a crescendo, summit intensity and quiet resolution. Jarrett’s methods were employed in two standards, Young And Foolish and Stella By Starlight, down to the American’s method of working his exploratory way into a tune, but on the latter involving a hard-swinging groove with exchanges for bass and drums that showed how the past cannot be completely ignored. The eponymous No Expectations heralded another sound-storm. Needless to say, its rising action, climactic fervour and settlement were well-regulated and, it has to be said, a tad predictable.
Though willing, the band had no encore to offer. With that buzz in their heads from a gig attended by a capacity crowd – and being jazz musicians – they might have done what jazz musicians do and made something up; or reprised Dwelling, for example, to experience again both the excitement of its central optimum work-rate and Kavanagh’s love of Milesian – and Danish – homeliness.
Nils Kavanagh Trio (Ursula Harrison, Nils Kavanagh and Sam Green) at the Melville Community Arts Centre, Abergavenny, 26 April 2026
