Cork Jazz Festival review: Great sounds at Triskel from Paul Dunlea & Cormac McCarthy, and Marc Copland
Marc Copland and Paul Dunlea at Triskel for the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival. Pictures: John Cronin
There is a scene in famed 1950s concert film Jazz on a Summer’s Day, screened at Triskel on Friday and Saturday, in which the camera zooms in on jazz singer Anita O’Day. The consummate and supremely cool “song stylist” is in the middle of a swinging yet daring version of Sweet Georgia Brown, and the close-up captures all the artistry, originality and vivacity that made both O’Day and the jazz of the period so utterly irresistible.
The film was shot at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, around 60 years or so after jazz first emerged in New Orleans at the end of the nineteenth century. Sixty years or so on, in Cork in 2021, three musicians brilliantly continued that tradition of freedom and control, eloquence and restraint, proving once again that jazz has lost none of its power to captivate and transport.
A sold-out, fully Covid-compliant Friday night concert in Triskel Christchurch featured two of Cork’s finest and most versatile players, trombonist Paul Dunlea and pianist Cormac McCarthy, up where they unquestionably belong: on a main Guinness Cork Jazz Festival stage.
The wonderfully empathetic duo presented a programme of standards (broad enough to embrace an arrangement of Paul McCartney’s Maybe I’m Amazed), and smartly original compositions that mostly leaned towards the tender – perfect vehicles for Dunlea’s sweet-toned sensitivity and McCarthy’s powerful lyricism.
“Two local lads headlining the festival is mind-blowing,” said Dunlea, modestly, at the end of the 80-minute set. Two world-class local lads, that is.
Saturday evening in the same space spotlighted acclaimed American pianist Marc Copland, the first international musician to play at Triskel in 20 months. In a compelling solo performance, Copland offered a masterclass in advanced jazz piano, a lifetime’s learning distilled into rich and beautiful melodies, harmonies and colours – a quiet fire and a poetic touch.
Across two sets Copland played originals, a few standards (including a vivid, multi-hued interpretation of Miles Davis’s classic All Blues), and a series of compositions by his great friend and collaborator, guitarist John Abercrombie, who died in 2017.
Mostly, however, the pianist told the capacity audience that he was “in the zone”, making creative decisions in the moment, deciding on tunes as they came to him, “just letting it happen”.
It was a spontaneous set of enthrallingly improvised music. Anita O’Day, ever the elegant risk-taker, would no doubt have fully approved.
