Elliot Galvin, Georgia Cécile and Sultan Stevenson standout at Belfast’s Brilliant Corners Festival

Piano and synth player Elliot Galvin’s extraordinary gig comprised a continuous 85-minute performance of his current album The Ruin, a suite inspired, he explained, by his childhood in Essex. The music began, movingly, with several minutes of plangent solo piano to which, by and by, were added Mandhira de Saram’s harsh, heavily distorted violin, Sebastian Rochford’s drums and Ruth Goller’s bass and eerie, wordless vocals. The sounds were bleak, the effect utterly discomfiting. Thereafter the music was frequently tumultuous and frequently fearsome. One violin solo seemed to evoke the sounds of urban disorder; a subsequent bass solo sounded like war was breaking out. Quieter interludes suggested enervation rather than tranquillity. If this is what a south of England childhood sounds like, I couldn’t help thinking, thank God I grew up amidst the peacefulness and uneventfulness of Belfast!

Backed only by Venezuelan guitarist Aleph Aguiar, Scottish singer Georgia Cécile (pictured above) enchanted the audience with her engaging personality and vocals which were technically accomplished and which conveyed a range of emotions with great subtlety. The many well-crafted original songs included ‘In New York’, a classy, wide-eyed love song and ‘He Knew How To Love’, a tender, poetic song about her father. Amongst the standards were a swinging ‘I’m Old Fashioned’, which featured a dazzling Aguiar solo, and ‘Fine And Mellow’ on which Cécile communicated Billie Holiday’s worldly-wise, and, indeed, world-weary, lyrics very persuasively.

Fast-rising London pianist Sultan Stevenson’s playing on the likes of ‘Guilty By Association’ and ‘Unspeakable Happiness’ was spare and ruminative but possessed of a quiet intensity that was gripping. Improvising with a wonderful control of narrative structure, at times Stevenson (pictured above) played with such delicacy as to make one beam with pleasure. ‘Safe Passage’, inspired by McCoy Tyner, pleasingly evoked Tyner in spirit and style. The numinous ‘He Has Made Me Whole’ was beautiful and seemed deeply felt. Jacob Gryn (bass) and Joel Waters (drums) were marvellously responsive accompanists.

Alina Bzhezhinska & HipHarpCollective’s Tribute To Alice Coltrane marvellously celebrated the music of the pioneering jazz harpist, with the juxtaposition of Bzhezhinska’s often ethereal harp and Tony Kofi’s earthy tenor sax created a fascinating tension.

On Joe Henderson’s ‘Fire’, on the original recording of which Alice Coltrane played, Kofi soloed with John Coltrane-like intensity while Bzhezhinska’s playing was dramatic. The tune also included an edgy duet by bassist Menelik Clafey and drummer Matt Holmes.

Bzhezhinska explained before ‘Meditation’ that she had just returned two days before from a volunteering trip to her Ukrainian homeland. Her playing on the tune was, variously, reflective, mournful, turbulent, defiant, anguished and discordant. This was a performance of great emotional depth and enormously moving.

Elsewhere she used advanced techniques, at times, for example, slapping and tapping the frame of her harp with her hands and fingers. Coltrane’s ‘Journey In Satchidananda’ ended the concert with a sense of peace, a sense of healing, after which the capacity crowd rose as one in a hugely enthusiastic standing ovation.