Jazzmatazz: Straw hats at the ready for the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival

It nearly feels like a lifetime ago since the last time we saw a full-on Jazz weekend break out all over town - and while a 2021 edition was put together on very little notice after the easing of Covid-era restrictions, festival organisers are referring to this year’s Guinness Cork Jazz Weekend as the first full instalment of the event since the outbreak of Covid.

In the time since, we’ve spent time locked down at home, where we had time to contemplate our relationships with music, be it exploring favourites old and new on vinyl and streaming services, or tuning in to live-streamed gigs from the likes of Cyprus Avenue, Corkman Philip King’s Other Voices, as well as front rooms, garages, home studios, street corners and anywhere else people could put up their smartphones or big gear and go live.

We had time away from the bright lights and booming PAs, the big rooms and the tiny gaffs, the feeling of community, the feeling of being in the moment with the artists and performers, the chin-stroking over equipment onstage, the leering at t-shirts and records for sale, the shite-talk outside in the smoking area.

And while Covid-19 can’t be ruled out as an ongoing threat - no matter how some reading might wish your writer to be engaging in idle speculation - it feels like we’re slowly turning a corner in Cork, with gigs of all shapes and sizes resuming over the course of the past few months, and audiences slowly following, in many cases getting out to appreciate what we’d all missed.

Tickets are moving for a newly-refocused Jazz, including crowd-pleasers like The New Power Generation, modern genre exponents like GoGo Penguin, and world-travelled acts like Brazilian jazz legends Azymuth and Nigerian revolutionary Seun Kuti.

Live at St Luke’s man Caoilian Sherlock discusses the run-up to the Jazz from the venue’s perspective: “Really excited. As usual, every year it's a big, joyous celebration of music in Cork. Mostly jazz [laughs]. It's really exciting. We've got a great lineup in St. Luke's and I'll be performing myself around the city. I think I have ten gigs that weekend. So yeah, really excited.”

Adds Cork Opera House CEO Eibhlín Gleeson: “We're really excited. We have been planning this for a long time. I think every year, the Opera House kind-of puts aside its regular programming and just turns into Party Central, and I think this year is no different.

“We have a really great lineup with lots of fun bands, and we also have been quite a highly creative jazz program in the Green Room with Paul Dunlea and Karen Underwood, and another few super-brilliant jazz musicians. So I like to think that we have kind of both ends of the spectrum - party at the front, and really great high-end jazz at the back of the house.”

Eoin Aher from Cyprus Avenue, hosting its first full jazz with a full array of venues and stages, says: "We’re very much looking forward to this year’s edition of the festival, and from a ticket sales point of view, customers are feeling the same way.

"Quite a few Cyprus Avenue shows have already sold out including Jenny Greene & two shows with Lyra. Toucan and Sinead O Brien are selling really well and we’ve added additional shows with Pillow Queens and Boots & Kats due to phenomenal demand.

"We can’t wait to show off our new addition to the complex – Wavelength – a new 130-cap rooftop bar located over Cyprus Avenue & Old Oak with a continental flair, connected to a recently installed 200sqm solar farm. It's available for private & corporate functions - but is open to the general public in time for the Jazz."

Part of the appeal of the Jazz has always been the buzz and the buildup - seeing the announcements take place, the scramble for tickets, the discussion in certain quarters on the nature of the programme and the balance between genre exponents and proven crowd-pleasers drawn to Cork by the largest crowds the city-centre will see all year.

And though the buzz is definitely back, with venues all over the city announcing full-to-bursting lineups throughout the weekend, there’s still an air of cautious optimism, as all involved are hoping to lure out people who have been apprehensive about coming back through venue doors.

“I think people are still quite cautious about what they decide to go to, and we're certainly feeling that across the programme, but there's always a sense with the Jazz of 'the devil may care' about it,” says Gleeson.

“There's always a really kind of high-fun atmosphere, it's the one weekend a year where people let go a little bit. I don't think this year is any different. I think that we're at the point now where it's beginning to recover. It's taken us this long to really get to the point where we can programme with certainty again, and there's great comfort in that. I think people can be sure that the shows are going to go ahead like wasn't the case in the last couple of years.

“People are beginning to return to what their understanding of the Jazz is, and we can feel that even in the way people are responding to the programme. Tickets are flying out the door, which is a great, great sign and the first year in a long time that that's happened.”

“Yeah, I think people are excited to have a big festival in the city again,” says Sherlock. "We're heading into the winter, so I think people are a bit trepidatious about the Covid thing. Hard to make a call, really, because everything with Covid has been a known unknown. I think people are nervous heading into the winter, but the Jazz will be a lovely way to kick that off, and hopefully we'll all be safe for the foreseeable future, anyway.”

"There’s a real excitement around this year’s festival around town. Last year’s edition was great but was such a blur with only having a definite green light for lifting restrictions 24 hours beforehand. So this year, even though international touring schedules are still only beginning to find their feet post-Covid; advance ticket sales are up, hotels are pretty much full again and the city is gearing itself up for a major weekend.

"Let’s face it, Cork people know how to party and are eager to get out to shows and have a great night out with top-notch entertainment on offer!"

Of course, aside from the promoting, artist liaison, outreach and everything else that attends in the run-up to gigs, there’s the very real matter of the weekend itself. For music professionals of all persuasions, the Jazz is the big event of the winter, in many cases, the big flurry of work that precedes the run-up to Christmas, with musicians running around between venues for as many as ten to twelve gigs in a three-to-four day span.

The art of surviving the weekend comes down to proper preparation, says Sherlock.

“Lots of water. Make sure you try to get three meals a day. Usually, you're on the run the whole time, but try to keep your head. I'm doing a mixture of cover band gigs and DJing and some of my gigs, one o'clock in the afternoon Friday and finish at three o'clock in the morning on Monday. You’ve got to keep yourself hydrated as well.”

Adds Gleeson: “I'm really excited about it. I love the Jazz so much, it's my favorite weekend in Cork, and we definitely have to get festival-fit at the Opera House, we have to make sure everybody's really rested beforehand, so that they can really take the pace, because it's like having all these shows over the weekend is a lot, it's heavy going on the house.

“We make sure that our people are looked after, we try and make sure that our staff have a good time at work, even if they do have to work the whole weekend, that they have a bit of craic. We make sure we feed them and give them the right kind of comfort to keep going.

“It's the weekend that challenges us most, out of all of the work that we do, and we can really flex up to it, we really, really relish the challenge of it every year.”

Guinness Cork Jazz Weekend runs from Thursday, October 27, to Monday, October 31, at venues all over the city and county. For more info and tickets, check here.