Looking forward to Cork Jazz Festival, which will be an absolute blast
The Pharcyde will play the Opera House as part of the 2023 Guinness Cork Jazz Festival.
Most of these problems have been ironed out and it is now a festival which succeeds in both artistic and commercial terms. Crucially, for Cork, it’s the biggest weekend of the year by far. Today I’m gonna offer an overview of this year’s festival, which I will explore in more detail in the weeks approaching it in late October.
First of all, we’ve now got one of the most important people in music in Ireland shaping the music of the Jazz weekend. Mark Murphy of Choice Cuts is now the festival director and has been so since the pandemic disrupted the whole country in 2020. The Jazz made a tiny attempt to get something back off the ground that year, on a few weeks notice, and finally came back in a more familiar shape last year. This year is the first year where the fruits of his role can really be seen though. Mark has been more responsible than anyone for helping bring the best jazz acts to Ireland in the last 20 years and, most importantly, he has always booked cutting edge acts alongside some of the legends who have paved the way.
The Cork jazz festival had already helped bring some of the biggest names in jazz history to Cork and, from its inception, acts such as Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Oscar Peterson and Herbie Hancock played shows here. The list continues and I remember seeing Chick Corea, Roy Ayers, McCoy Tyner, Robert Glasper, Gregory Porter, Jimmy Smith and many others here, in a 45-year history that runs deep.
Sadly, many of the heritage names of jazz are now departed, and many on my short list are no longer with us. It’s pretty understandable when you consider that for many people the heyday of jazz took place in the ’50s and ’60s and ’70s.
I’d argue that jazz continued to be innovative and relative beyond this point but that much of the artistic creativity involved other genres, such as hip-hop, funk, soul, house and others. Jazz is arguably the bedrock of many of these genres and its influence on hip-hop can never be over-estimated.
Jazz purists might not agree, but innovators and pioneers such as Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock not only kept up with but helped spearhead new trends and new musical forms as they got older.
Herbie thankfully still walks among us but most of the trailblazers from 50 or so years ago are now gone, which leaves a jazz festival with some tricky decisions to make.
Thankfully, Choice Cuts have been at the forefront of booking the best acts, young and old, and many of them will be in Cork this October.
The Pharcyde and Souls of Mischief are two of the best hip-hop groups to combine jazz with hip-hop and they are doing a double bill together in Cork Opera House.
Some of the other big names on the bill also have a relationship with jazz although they may not be jazz per se. Macy Gray, Corinne Bailey Rae, Morcheeba and others are certainly a lot more jazz than some of the previous names who were high up the bill, and they will draw big crowds.
Matthew Halsall, Kurt Elling, Hypnotic Brass, Brandee Younger and Max Exodus all return while DJ wise the festival is bringing back much loved regulars from times gone by, Mr Scruff, Luke Una and Giles Peterson.
Importantly, newcomers from Cork and Ireland play a big role, and you can catch Jar Jar Jr, Kean Kavanagh, Yenkee and many others, and there will be plenty of more announcements of Ireland’s new wave coming in the next few weeks.
There’s still acts that have little or no relationship with jazz on the bill, but they don’t dominate the bill, and that to me is important for the credibility of the festival.
It’s gonna be an absolute blast, and in coming weeks I’ll delve deeper into some of Ireland’s emerging artists who you can catch this October weekend!
