Death announced of Cork Jazz Festival co-founder Pearse Harvey

The death has been announced of Cork Jazz Festival co-founder Pearse Harvey, after a long illness.

When Metropole Hotel marketing manager Jim Mountjoy came up with the idea of a jazz festival back in 1978 to take advantage of the new bank holiday, Mr Harvey was one of the people he turned to for music expertise.

A trumpeter and keen jazz fan who wrote music articles for the then Evening Echo and Cork Examiner, where he worked as a compositor, Mr Harvey teamed up fellow stalwart Ray Fitzgerald and Jim Mountjoy to form the core trio who would guide the festival in its early years. It quickly grew from a decent local event into one of the prestige markings on the European jazz calendar.

With early sponsorship from John Player, and later Guinness – the company that is still backing the festival to this day – the Ballinlough man was delighted to be able to mix with some of the top stars of the genre.

As well as helping to choose acts and organise their visits to Cork, one of Mr Harvey’s duties was to welcome the stars at Cork Airport. He once told this journalist about the difficulties of even recognising some of the invited musicians in an less multi-cultural era when communications were done through landline phone or letter. He had a particularly unfortunate incident when he approached the wrong black musician at the airport that he had mistaken for Oscar Peterson.

When the great jazz pianist eventually did make it, Mr Harvey recalled a wary figure who took time to warm to the Cork organisers. Several of the stars coming to Cork had been burnt by less scrupulous promoters in the UK and beyond, but the Leeside festival soon established a reputation for prompt payments and generally treating its stars well.

Perhaps the highlight of Mr Harvey’s time with the festival was when he was dispatched to London to accompany Ella Fitzgerald to Cork. 

He recalled the 63-year-old legend as a warm and pleasant figure who put in two great performances at Cork Opera House, despite feeling the pinch from a gruelling series of gigs in Britain.

“When she went on stage, she gave it her all,” Mr Harvey later recalled. 

“She was quite old by then, but you could still see that she really had something special. She also had a really good rapport with the audience and they loved her.” 

Mr Harvey’s love of the music and the festival was obvious to anyone who encountered him and he remained a passionate advocate for the event and jazz in general during his involvement with the Cork festival and beyond.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin paid tribute to him, saying: "Through his work in co-founding the Cork Jazz Festival, Pearse leaves a wonderful legacy in the city and the country at large.

"His initiative sparked a rejuvenation of Cork during a period when the economy is not as buoyant as it is currently."

He was predeceased by his beloved wife Pat in 2016, and the couple had three children, Avril, Joyce, and Ruth. Reposing at the Temple Hill Funeral Home, Boreenmanna Road on Sunday, January 18 from 4pm to 5pm, with a cremation service on Monday at the Island Crematorium, Ringaskiddy.