City was buzzing for Cork Jazz Festival thriller
Souls of Mischief won over new fans last weekend with their performance during the 45th Guinness Jazz Festival.
The jazz festival is where we find Cork operating at its peak, but this year, despite moments where the weather once again threatened everything, the festival got most things right, and the city was buzzing for three or four days.
The line-up was top class, and nearly all of the big names at least had some sort of relationship to jazz; in previous times it felt that sometimes the jazz was getting away from the jazz festival, especially in the bigger venues.
The Cork Opera House is one such venue where the music was incredible all weekend.
Kicking off with Macy Gray, who had already done a secret gig in Coughlan’s on Wednesday, The Opera House hosted top calibre visitors, such as the Pharcyde, Souls of Mischief, Morcheeba, Corinne Bailey Ray, The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and many more.
There were no shortage of great Irish acts on the stage too, and regulars, such as Karen Underwood and Paul Dunlea, were joined by the likes of Zaska, Melina Malone, Qbanaa, DeCarteret, and the Scratch.
The Scratch gig was cut short because of safety issues, but overall The Opera House was fantastic last weekend.
The Souls of Mischief and Pharcyde show will be remembered for a long time, and the Souls in particular won even new fans over, 30 years on from their inception.
The Pharcyde had played here twice before and are always amazing, and it was great watching two groups from the 90s bring so much energy to the stage. Even 30- and 40- year-olds I met told me they felt 20 again. That’s the power of music!
The nature of the game in the Cork Opera House means that there are only certain windows of opportunity for shows outside of their regular commitments, such as Panto season. Getting the seats out of the front ain’t always possible either, but this weekend it was a proper music venue that showed what we often lack here in Cork city. It was fantastic.
I was lucky enough to host a show in the Everyman Theatre too, and it’s another amazing venue that provides many of the best jazz festival shows year in, year out.
Our show was a Sunday matinee gig, featuring four of Ireland’s best young acts. Cork’s Sam Healy and projective were joined by QBanaa and Negro Impacto, for a soulful Sunday session that underlined the strength of the music scene here in 2023. All of these acts are barely 20 (some are younger), but they are already playing in one of the country’s most iconic venues, on the same day and same stage as the legendary Fred Wesley.
Most of our youngsters were doing bar shows too, and many are in cover bands to supplement things, but it was powerful watching our emerging acts play original music at the Everyman.
Ireland is about to pop off, and these four are gonna be at the heart of it going forward. It says a lot that apart from those groups on stage, there were various members of some of our other best acts there too, playing in the bands mentioned.
Neubri, Uly, Cooks But We’re Chefs, and many others were represented, and it’s great to see Ireland’s new school all collaborating.
I can only really speak of the shows I attended, but there was also some amazing late night activity in Cyprus Avenue, who welcomed some of the best DJs on the planet.
I enjoyed seeing my Mr Scruff, Luke Unabomber, and Gilles Peterson rip it up, and the atmosphere was again fantastic out there on the dance floor. Cork was flooding at some stages, but it didn’t stop the big crowds, and there were also late night DJ sets in Cork City Hall and many other venues.
In St Peter’s, on North Main Street, we opened an exhibition of hip-hop’s journey from the early 70s until now, all through the eyes of the jazz music which inspired much of it.
DJs and performers joined us all weekend, and the exhibition, which is free, continues until Saturday.
Refreshingly, there were lots of kids there too, and it’s fair to say that the new generation will be enjoying the jazz festival here for many more years to come!
