Cork Jazz Festival: Lifeblood of festival is local musicians, loyal audiences, and live music

While the headline artists get a lot of the attention, the local musicians who play the trail and sessions all over the city during the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival are its lifeblood, giving professional musicians a chance to play multiple times over the few days to new audiences and old fans.

The city is always vibrant where the bars are hopping with great music and vibes

While no longer living in Cork, Jenny Howe knows only too well the festival’s reputation. “The Guinness Cork Jazz festival is both renowned and respected, performing at it and in my home town is a huge honour. The festival creates such a buzz and puts Cork in the forefront of festivals through Europe and Worldwide — the city is always vibrant and full of energy where the bars are hopping with great music and vibes”.

Jenny regularly performs in Ronnie Scott’s in London, arguably the most well-known Jazz venue in the world, certainly Europe, so she certainly knows what a hopping jazz venue is like and is bringing her vocal skills back for what promises to be a special gig, what she simply refers to as singing “in The Metropole with Harry and friends”. She is joining Harry Connolly, a saxophone and flute player who was a member of the first Cork Jazz Festival Committee and a performing musician at every festival to date. They will be performing in the The Metropole Hotel on Saturday, October 29, at 11pm, and Sunday, October 30 at 7.30pm.

Karen Underwood continues Jenny’s point about the festival being at the forefront. “It puts Cork on the musical world map because it not only attracts people who love to listen to music but also world-class people who love to perform to music.”

The people who have performed at Guinness Cork Jazz Festival before her is a strong point for Karen. “We are all part of a legacy, when I think of of people like Ella Fitzgerald, Chick Corea, BB King and the other people who’ve come to Ireland to take part of the Guinness Jazz Festival and that I too get to be a part of that, it makes me feel really special. It’s always one of the busiest weekends of my career, not only do I do a lot of concerts but I meet people I haven’t seen in so long — and particularly after Covid it’s people I haven’t seen in years.”

Karen will be performing her ‘Love Me or Leave Me’ show where she sings the songs of Nina Simone, Ester Phillips, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington and many more at The Green Room in Cork Opera House on Friday at 7pm and both Saturday and Sunday at 3pm and 6pm.

Paul Dunlea, a trombonist who not only plays regularly at the Green Room but also curates the programme there, gives a lot of credit to Cork Opera House to finding a home for a small jazz club atmosphere within the larger festival.

“It’s great to see all the Cork Opera House getting behind the concept, they dig into their own resources to help me put on the Green Room sessions — they don’t get enough credit for the stuff they do support — we can only seat 50 or so people in there so it’s not really a money making venture, it’s just supporting live jazz music and musicians”.

Paul recognises this time of year as his best chance to balance his own regular gigging with being able to bringing interesting guests for fans, students and the festival to get the most out of. “As a musician, the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival is the pinnacle of the calendar and affords me the opportunity to bring jazz artists from around the world with the help of some of the venues. I play around Cork city year round and build up good relationships with them where I can bring over musicians to form unique bands for the weekend in the gig slots all over town. So the pub trails have a very high standard of playing, it also bolsters the local scene as some of the Cork musicians get to know the touring ones and perhaps play in their clubs when they are abroad, etc.”

Paul uses one of the bands and a venue as an example. “This year The Crane Lane gave Michael Janisch’s Worlds Collide band a prime slot and that means they can stay around for the whole weekend and play all over the place. Between the eight of us we’ll be playing two or three gigs a day around town in various combinations, culminating in the gigs I’ve curated for Cork Opera House’s Green Room.”

Speaking of the festival and the trail overall, Paul is very positive. “You can’t quantify its importance really, economically it’s crucial of course and we saw how many people were hit by Covid. The economic jolt of that will be great for all the pubs hosting it as well as for music fans. The handbrake is off fully this year — and it will be brilliant to see and hear so much music streaming out of so many doors. There are many hundreds of musicians who are going to be playing in the city, with music going for 13 or 14 hours a day. ”

Cormac McCarthy: Will perform at The Green Room in Cork Opera House.

There are lots of local acts on the jazz trail also. For more see  guinnesscorkjazz.com