Don Byron at Malta Jazz Festival

Mr Jonathan Sorrell, writing about the Malta Jazz Festival (The Sunday Times, August 4), takes a hostile stance to what he defines as "highbrow" and "obscure" music. This is a denigration of the essence of 20th century art in general. I found his diatribe against Don Byron appalling, especially when I consider the latter's performance to be the highlight of this year's festival.

Basing an aesthetic judgment on criteria such as audience appeal and the dichotomy of consonance/dissonance is puerile, short-sighted and demonstrates a certain shallowness in musical understanding.

His attack on Don Byron's seeming lack of harmony clearly demonstrates that Mr Sorrell is unaware of the existence of polytonality, atonality, playing 'out' and the post-bop innovations of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman - elements that have been integrated into today's jazz idiom.

Contrary to what Mr Sorrell thinks, Don Byron's music is highly structured. His idiom is deeply rooted in the jazz tradition and being a tireless experimenter, he has worked in many different styles - Klezmer, Afro-Latin, hip-hop and free jazz, among others. His music represents the cutting edge of New York's eclectic jazz scene.

And if Mr Sorrell is interested in Don Byron's ability to play mainstream/straight-ahead jazz using orthodox harmonies, I suggest he listen to Bug Music or Romance with the Unseen.

Jazz has undergone enormous changes since the swing era, when it was primarily 'dance music'. While I am against the extreme intellectualisation/conceptualisation of jazz as seen in certain trends of the European free jazz scene, I think that as in any other art form, the jazz musician today has to find the right equilibrium between the instinctual and the cerebral, the concrete and the abstract, the rational and the irrational. This is one of the fundamentals of the creative process.

In combining Afro-Latin music with the contemporary jazz idiom (embracing all elements of Western harmony) in Music for Six Musicians, Don Byron has managed to create a perfect 'fusion', a music which is tense, lyrical and intellectually challenging at the same time, and which, most important of all, grooves.

Today, after more than 100 years of jazz and development in Western music, it is pointless talking about dissonance and consonance and looseness of structure, and Mr Sorrell's denunciation of Don Byron's music on such grounds is also directed against Stravinsky, Webern, Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, Archie Shepp and the majority of 20th century composers and artists.

I think that one of the primary roles of the Malta Jazz Festival is to educate the Maltese audience. In Malta there are no serious jazz clubs and people are not exposed to jazz, and although one cannot ignore the local talent, the jazz tradition in Malta is practically non-existent.

The organisers of the Malta Jazz Festival are fulfilling their responsibilities in introducing this rich 20th century art form (in all its facets) to the Maltese public, and in recent years I have observed a considerable increase in interest in jazz among Maltese youth.

One need not possess a Ph.D. in music to be able to appreciate modern jazz, and it was very encouraging in this year's festival to observe newcomers approaching the music of challenging artists such as Don Byron with curiosity and open-mindedness. On the other hand, reactions such as Mr Sorrell's are unhealthy and detrimental to the progress of culture on this island.