Over 60 gigs in 100 hours at the Metropole Hotel... home of the Cork Jazz Festival

The central hub of the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival is The Metropole Hotel. While there are hundreds and hundreds of gigs around the city you could also just check into the Metropole, never leave the building and see over 60 gigs in less than 100 hours!

Famously the idea of Cork having a jazz festival came from within The Metropole Hotel itself in 1978, and the current management team of The Metropole are always sure to praise their predecessors.

Aaron Mansworth, the managing director of Trigon Hotels (who operate Cork Airport Hotel and Cork International Hotel as well as The Metropole Hotel) namechecked them almost immediately.

“You have to give Jim Mountjoy the credit for conceiving of the idea, and then the people that were around him that helped put it together; Harry Connolly absolutely has to be mentioned, as a Jazz playing musician in Cork back then he was crucial to the festival (he still plays the Metropole Club every year, and this year is on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 9.30pm in The Douglas Vance Room with the much love Harry Connolly Jazz Friends slot).”

While Aaron knows the local infrastructure is what made the festival tick - and continues to do - he is aware that the Metropole had to bring huge names back then to create momentum.

“I was talking about it only during the week, the three guys who were the first headliners, they were huge name for 1978: George Melly, Kenny Ball and Ronnie Scott. 

Ronnie Scott! One of the most famous names in Jazz - and arguably the most famous jazz venue in the world - blew the very first notes at the John Player Cork Jazz Festival (as it was known then) and has gone on to become such a huge festival. It’s incredible to think that happened in the same venue space that we still have now.

As a Cork native, Aaron knew ‘De Jazz’ time of year well. Originally from outside but now working right at the coalface, “I grew up in a pub in Cobh, and always remember the jazz weekend back down, it was even hitting all the way down to Cobh where you’d get a lot of people that just wanted to go and have sort of fringe jazz like this, like they still do. Then, when I started working in hotels, the Cork Jazz Weekend was in everyone’s calendar, and then when we took over Metropole, my first jazz festival was probably about nine years ago. 

At this stage, I tend to know what’s going on around the place, and I think it’s been brilliant over the last couple of years, the way they’ve expanded it to incorporate other large gigs and shows, and they really sort of broaden that side or the city.

Fiona Collins, the chair of the festival committee, is absolutely clear on the importance of the Metropole to the Cork Jazz Festival.

“The Metropole is where it all started, no matter what we do or how it grows, it will always be the home of the festival. Every year people love going there, and everyone has stories from going to The Metropole, those stories vary from person to person and those stories can be decades apart, but everyone has stories!”

She is quick the acknowledge the Metropole regulars as crucial to the festival, both the regular attendees and staff, “because The Metropole has always been a hub to the festival, we’ve some people that book in every year and they are familiar faces who reappear like clockwork at the opening concert on the first day at the festival club. 

Also, it must be said that the staff are amazing, everyone knows it’s a tough industry anyway but to see the same faces behind the bar and welcoming the guests year on year is what helps it feel like an actual festival; they understand what makes this all work.

The continuity of staff is a point Aaron also made, when he contrasted people starting out in the industry against the old hands. “We have some people that are working with us for over 30 or 40 years of service, they know the festival like the back of their hands. But we also do a recruitment day, because you always need staff for our regular events and corporate bookings and you always need huge additional numbers of staff for the jazz weekend. I think those people are sometimes taken aback but that’s the great thing about it, people are swept up in the buzz, the feel of the whole weekend. 

I won’t say it becomes a madhouse, but if it’s like one in a good way. One positive is we are actually able to keep on most of the team afterwards, right all the way to Christmas and beyond.

Aaron has one tradition for the festival. 

“It’s without a doubt our busiest weekend of the year, you could say the Metropole comes alive, when you look at the numbers that passed through, all ages and all happy, it’s fantastic really.  I’m basically inside the Metropole for the whole weekend, walking around, meeting and greeting people, but I do take a walk around the city at one point just to soak it all in, and there’s two things I’d say on that is, you can see how this brings tens of thousands of people in the city every day, around 120,000 people into the city over the whole weekend. It’ll generate the guts of 45 million over the course of the weekend for the city. It can be the same when there’s gigs down in The Marquee or Musgrave Park or Páirc Uí Chaoimh, but it’s a real reminder of the necessity for an event center, imagine if we had this all year round. 

There’s nothing like a good event to you know, when things are feeling a little bit down or whatever. 

"That’s the great thing about things like the Cork Jazz Festival, everybody benefits. Okay, bars, hotels and restaurants will get an additional boost to speak. But everybody is getting something out of his in some way, shape or form, you know.”

Go to www.themetropolehotel.ie for further festival club information