Over the past couple of years, there has been more opportunity to hear jazz and related musics in and around Stirling than ever before. A succession of Scottish bands have been presented at the MacRobert Centre in the University on late Friday evenings (rather inconveniently timed for those of us with young families). And the Council's Heritage and Cultural Services have co-promoted artists from further afield, usually in the Tolbooth. That venue is unavailable while it is renovated, so the Yuri Honing Trio were presented in the theatre space in the Cowane Centre.

The first thing which has to be said about this event is that it was grievously under-attended. Why should this have been so?

• Perhaps it was under-publicised, although I doubt that more posters and press-releases would really have made much difference. (Nor, I suspect, would it have helped much if it had been publicised on this site.)
• Maybe the idea of live music, and especially of live jazz, is so far outside people's ken that it can only be improved by striving to take the music out into workplaces, into schools and into public spaces during the day. It may be worth a try.
• It is even possible that the populism in the Yuri Honing Trio's repertoire kept some jazz fans away. I hope not - jazz has never been scared of taking and remaking popular song.
• Most likely, unfortunately, is the defeatist logic which says "Nothing worthwhile happens in Stirling, nothing which happens in Stirling can be worthwhile." Well, nothing can be expected to come from that mentality.

In the event, the Yuri Honing Trio accomplished this successfully, adapting to the intimate circumstances. Their two sets showed an attractive range of trio playing. The format has its dangers, especially in the years since a 50s hard bop aesthetic was retrieved to become the norm. But at times, especially in the first set, the musicians drew instead on the possibilities for independent playing which were opened by various ESP-Disk records in the 1960s. Elsewhere, their advertised treatments of modern standards, from ABBA through to Green Day, were consistently interesting. The solo features by string bassist Tony Overwater were impressive, and Joost Lijbaart's drumming was as stimulating as on his previous visit to Stirling as part of the Michiel Borstlap Trio last year.

A. Dickson

May 1999

Alastair Kinloch's pictures of The Yuri Honing Trio at La Belle Angele, Edinburgh

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