Live music review: Louis Stewart and Jim Doherty

The Lord Kingsale, Kinsale

On Sunday night last, Irish jazz guitar legend, Louis Stewart, and champion piano man, Jim Doherty, played the Lord Kingsale as part of the music line-up at the Kinsale Arts Festival.

We were in the company of greatness. Doherty opened with a soothing ease that only confidence brings. Stewart joined him: calm and understated. Old friends and music veterans, they have played together “for all of this century and a good portion of the last”.

In the 50 or so years since they first met, they have worked on hundreds of music projects together, always planning to record an album of duets: Tunes, was released in 2013 and featured jazz standards from ‘the great American songbook’, and Broadway, and the song ‘You Go To My Head’. It formed the basis of Sunday’s programme.

‘My Heart Stood Still’, ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ and ‘Bye, Bye Booze’, a fun composition inspired by ‘Bye, Bye Blues’ and written on a Shrove Tuesday in anticipation of a long Lent (‘You never get those seven weeks back!’), were among the tracks. Their performance was masterful, their collaboration second nature. It was difficult to distinguish them from each other. As a combined voice, it was frustrating not to be able to fully appreciate the complexity of their shared dialogue. Still, it was great jazz played by greater musicians.