Cork Jazz Festival: GoGo Penguin - marching on the Everyman
While critics of the Jazz Weekend have long identified that one of the festival’s big letdowns has been an overemphasis on crowdpleasers in favour of the cutting-edge jazz that comprises the festival’s artistic foundation and legacy, the Everyman theatre on McCurtain Street has long been a haven for people seeking the latest and greatest the genre has to offer on the October Bank Holiday.
As the festival assumes something of a recalibration toward a diverse and artistically credible lineup of headliners, Manchester trio GoGo Penguin will be in the right place at the right time, as they head over the water to Leeside in the throes of intensive touring, treading the Everyman’s hallowed boards on Friday night.
“We're really looking forward to it. It's been a really exciting year for us, where we've been able to get back on the road again,” says pianist Chris Illingsworth. “It's been a difficult couple of years for everybody, Covid affected everyone in a lot of different ways, it just shut everything out. We didn't do a gig for two years, we didn't travel, get to play, we released an album at the beginning of the lockdown, we didn't get to even play any of that music until this year.
“All these gigs have been really exciting, and it's going to be great, coming over to Cork, we've always had really good times when we've been over in Ireland, good responses from the crowd and good atmosphere. It feels like it's going to be quite a long way away, because we've got this tour in Europe, before we get to that point, and then we finish that run, and then fly over to Cork. A bit of a busy one [laughs].”
New single ‘Erased by Sunlight’ is the band’s most recent release via new label home XXIM Records/Sony, recorded during the same sessions as their ‘Between Two Waves’ EP released last July, recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath. It’s both a standalone work, and an indicator of departures to come for an acclaimed collective that’s always leaned into the new.
"I guess it's a little bit of a continuation from where we were with the EP, there's still a few further leaps to go with some of the stuff that you'll hear when the new album comes out. We're gradually evolving and taking some steps that are a bit bolder and more forward-thinking than we've been in the past with a few different things, but I think this gives people a good taste of it. A lot of the music that we've written on this, because what we experienced the last couple of years of lockdown, and then with a change of personnel, there's been a lot of changes and a lot of differences where I’ve tried to approach that in the way that I've been writing, as well.
“With this latest track, the whole idea was to purposefully try and push myself in a different direction. So when you feel those instincts, when you sit at the piano, when you kind of think about things that might naturally come to you, try and push in a different direction away from that, see where that leads you just so that you're not falling into routines, falling into patterns, or falling into something that realistically belongs to a few years ago. Trying to move forward, trying to think forward, and once you've got that initial, new direction, allowing those instincts to kick back in, it helps you develop that in a way that still feels natural, and still feels like GoGo Penguin, but has that new direction and new element to it as well.”
The single also features new drummer Jon Scott, and on the topic of personnel change and new directions, for a genre as reliant on feel and collaboration as jazz, having a new face in a trio must be a sea-change in terms of the experience of working with someone, playing off them musically and in terms of stage presence, as well as the writing and improvisation aspect of the music.
"Yeah, I'll be honest, it's been really positive, it's just felt really fresh, it works hand in hand with that idea of trying to move a little bit different, in terms of what we're writing and where we're aiming musically. We've been able to incorporate some of that, because of what Jon's brought. He understands what we've been trying to do with the music, he knows what we want to keep, but he's finding his own space within that.
"We've tried to give him that space to do that, we're allowing him to bring his own personality, because at the end of the day, that's what we want with this band. We don't want it to be that we dictate. I'm not going to write music and then say, 'now you guys play it exactly like this'. I want them to bring their personality, their character and because of that, it hopefully becomes something bigger than any of us. It becomes its own entity that's almost alive in its own way, because it's that combination of all these different elements, and personalities, and ideas.”
It’s as well that the band are making a stab at this new direction and airing the resulting new material across some hectic UK and European touring, because there’s not going to be much of a letup next year, either, when the band follows up its previous self-titled long-player, with all the work that attends, says Illingworth.
“We've got quite a busy year after this tour, we've still got a few dates in the Netherlands, got one in Athens, one in Barcelona, a few others dotted around. It keeps us very busy to the end of the year. Because it's the first album release we've done in a while, there'll be a lot of press, so that's the first chunk of the year, just spent doing that.
“Personally, I'll be trying to do my best to spend some time at home with my family. I've got a little boy who's three and a half, and this is going to be my first experience of getting out on tour, and being away for a solid month or month and a half, and it's going to be quite challenging.
“A lot of people ask us if there's going to be other projects or things going on, but I think I'm going to do my best to just be at home, enjoy time with family, chill out and then once the album comes out, it's going to be busy again. We've got possible tours lined up in Australia, Japan, North America again, so I think it's gonna get real pretty quick.”
GoGo Penguin play a sold out show at the Everyman on McCurtain Street on night, Friday. October 28. Kickoff at 10pm, Check it out here.
For more see guinnesscorkjazz.com
