Music Cork is back – and this time the keynote speaker is Cork-born, Universal Vice President Sarah Desmond, writes Marjorie Brennan.

One of Cork Business Association’s top awards went to the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival, which we are told now generates €40m for the city and the regional economy.

Des O’Driscoll looks back on the strange set of circumstances that led to the founding of the festival in 1978.

Portland is a symbol of hipster culture... Cork has the ingredients to embrace such thinking, without forgetting to adopt a pragmatic and commercial approach, writes Joe Gill.

Cork Opera House has recorded a profit for the fifth consecutive year.

One of Ireland’s great hotels has issued a public appeal for help to celebrate its 120th anniversary this summer.

Hotels, bars and restaurants are enjoying a bumper bank holiday weekend as 40,000 people soak up the feelgood factor in Cork.

An eclectic mix of music at this year’s Guinness Jazz Festival is drawing in the crowds and making the festival a hit with fans of all genres of music.

New owners of Cork city’s Metropole Hotel are the Philips Hotel Group, who acquired the Cork International Airport Hotel, for c €5m, back in 2012.

Cork, Kerry and Limerick hotels are among a portfolio of seven profitably trading Irish hotels being sold as a bundle, or individually, by Nama in the so-called Crystal Portfolio, valued all-in at €35m and totalling over 830 beds.

Senior City Management are expected to raise the issue of the weekend's closure of the Jack Lynch Tunnel at a Cork City Council meeting tonight.

NAMA is expected to pick up the pace of Irish hotel sales in the coming 18 months — so far, it has sold just 19 of the 136 in its control, and so has 117 left to sell, a conference organised by the Irish Hotel Federation heard this week.

WITH the May weekend fast approaching we thought we should make a bit of a song and dance about the fact today is International Dance Day and tomorrow, International Jazz Day.

American singer Rhiannon Giddens will perform work by three African-American composers at the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival.

With temperatures still a little on the cool side, music lovers could do worse than head to Bray this coming weekend. With musicians from more than 30 international acts on its jazz trail, Bray Jazz Festival looks set to see the mercury rising.

MICKY Donnelly’s new exhibition at Triskel Christchuch — Notes on a Minor Scale — has its roots in a concert he attended at the venue last year.

Tickets for the Killers’ gig at the O2 in Dublin went on sale this morning.

THE only answer to the recessionary blues is some rhythm and blues, with a bit of jazz thrown in for good measure.

Amiina began as a female quartet but have acquired two male performers.

JAZZ fans are facing the blues as Irish Rail finalises plans to shut down part of its mainline service to Cork during the October bank holiday weekend.

IT already regards itself as the ‘real capital’. Now Cork has launched a bid to become the country’s festivals capital.

CORK’s newest hotel – the River Lee Hotel – is also one of the city’s most established.

IT has hosted some of the biggest names in jazz, but Cork Opera House will be without a headline act next month following a row between Ireland’s biggest drinks companies.

CORK city must be much more aggressive promoting itself as a tourist destination, new figures show.