Meet the people who help bring the Cork Jazz Festival to life

With the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival in full swing, with up to 100,000 punters expected in the city, Ellie O’Byrne meets some of the business people who help to make it all happen

Grammy-winning jazz artist Gregory Porter headlines at the Cork Opera House for the opening night of Guinness Cork Jazz Festival on Thursday. Picture: Darragh Kane

Everyone has a story from the Jazz. For Joe Kelly, who has been booking gigs and running events in Cork for 34 of those years, one of his stand-out memories is the time that Sinéad O’Connor showed up to perform guest vocals with a UK dub soundsystem.

“On-U Soundsystem were coming in, founded by legendary dub producer Adrian Sherwood,” Mr Kelly recalls.

“A couple of days before the festival I get a call, saying, any chance of a couple more flights. I said ‘Jesus, we’re really pretty maxed out,’ and he said, ‘It’s for Sinéad O’Connor.’ She hadn’t played in Ireland in years.”

One of Mr Kelly’s colleagues went to pick up the diminutive star from Cork Airport, only for his car to break down, with O’Connor and her eldest son aboard, at the Kinsale Road Roundabout.

“But she was really cool and really nice about it, very quiet and unassuming, and she came and did four songs on the night, and it was just fantastic,” he says.

Having run club nights, gigs and events in Cork in venues including the Pavilion, the Savoy, and Sir Henry’s, these days, Mr Kelly is one half of music events company The Good Room, who run the Live at St Luke’s gig series in a former church in St Luke’s Cross on Cork’s Northside.

The Live at St Luke’s line-up for the rest of the jazz weekend includes Yankari Afrobeat Collective, Les Amazones D’Afrique, and the Staples Singers, but Mr Kelly is also eagerly anticipating the festival appearance of a couple of homegrown acts.

Jazz legend Courtney Pine on soprano sax performing at the Everyman Palace during the 2013 Guinness Cork Jazz Festival. File picture: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision

“Fixity are playing, and Bog Jazz, which is Sliabh Luachra fiddle player Eoin O’Sullivan, formerly of Stanley Super 800 too, playing Sliabh Luachra music on electric guitar.

“The first time I heard it, for Crosstown Drift festival, I thought, wow, that sounds like jazz.”

With Cork Airport announcing that more than 55,000 passengers will arrive over this long weekend and more than 100,000 punters expected at festival events, Cork city is expecting a bumper Jazz Festival weekend.

With three new hotels having opened in the city centre in 2024 — the Premier Inn on Morrison’s Quay and two Marriott offerings, Moxy and The Residence, at Camden Quay — 153-bedroom Moxy Hotel and 53-bedroom Residence Inn, the pressure on bed-nights in the city, formerly a big concern in the business community over the jazz weekend, has been somewhat alleviated.

Cork making National Geographic’s Best of the World 2025 list earlier this week, with their editor branding the Rebel city a “fun city with a vibrant culture,” brought an extra boost to the launch of the Jazz Festival on Thursday night.

€45-€50m spending boost to Leeside businesses

This year, it’s estimated that the festival will bring in a €45-€50m spending boost to Leeside businesses, according to festival organisers.

There may be a certain buoyancy to the outlook this year but, according to Joe Kelly, such is the enduring popularity of the Cork Jazz Festival (now in its 46th year) that even in less economically optimistic times, like the recession of the late noughties, people would still go out during the festival, which remained well attended, even if punters were spending less.

The enduring popularity of the festival since its first year in the Metropole Hotel in 1978 has seen it become Ireland’s biggest jazz event, and Joe Kelly sees this year’s festival line-up, with both diversity of musical genres but enough of a cornerstone of jazz, as particularly strong: 

“There have been different people at the helm with different visions of what it should be down through the years. 

“For a while there was a lot of contemporary and clubbing whereas I feel it is back towards the standard jazz stuff in the Metropole and the Everyman now.

“You can have a broad palette: the most important thing is that you have De La Soul, Gregory Porter, Orchestra BaoBab, that real quality stuff like that is going on. 

Ella Fitzgerald performing in Cork for the Cork Jazz Festival in 1980. File picture: Irish Examiner Archive

“They are building something a bit broader, but I feel that musically it’s going in the right direction at the moment.

“When you look back at the famous photos of people like Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie playing here, we have to get back to getting that level of artist and the festival bookers are going in the right direction. It can take years to get those acts in.”

So is there anything extra he feels the festival needs to endure and thrive into the future?

“One thing I really miss was the Monday night they used to have in the Metropole, which was great for bringing the staff who had worked the festival together,” he says.

“It was like a wind-down for people: all the PAs would still be set up, and there would be bands still hanging around, so all the staff of all the bars who had worked so hard all weekend would go to it, and it would go on pretty late.”

It was amazing, and very good for the culture around the festival.

Aaron Mansworth, president of the Cork Business Association and the managing director of Trigon Hotels in Cork, said the festival truly “lifts all boats” with all businesses from corner shops to pharmacies and hair salons seeing an increase in trade over the festival.

“When the city is packed, even your corner shops do extra business,” Mr Mansworth said. 

“People will lose their lippy and pop into a pharmacy, or there’s the breakfast roll hangover cure the next morning. I think there’s an all-round lift.

“One of the things I am always so impressed by is how dressed up people get. The fashion is off the charts, and that’s across generations. 

“You see all the young lads out in their three-piece suits. So businesses like hairdressers and fashion retail will also have had a boost.

“Anything that lifts Cork gives all of us a lift. This year, bookings are solid, ticket sales are good: it’s very positive. 

“There’s such a feelgood factor this year: it’s been a tough old year for hospitality, we’ve had some knocks and seen some closures so personally I think it’s really important to celebrate the wins when it comes to the Jazz Festival.”

Buddy Rich performing on stage at Cork Opera House during the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival in in 1986. File picture: Eddie O’Hare

Mr Mansworth welcomes additional late trains being put on by Irish Rail between Kent Station and Midleton, Mallow, and Cobh was a very important step in the right direction in terms of public transport provision.

“The additional regional trains and bus services like Cobh Connects are a vital service for the festival,” he says.

Fiona Collins has been chair of the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival committee for the past eight years, and has worked the festival in various different capacities since she first began as a volunteer 20 years ago.

This year, for the first time, she is coming to the weekend with a dual hat on: she was appointed Cork City Council’s nighttime economy advisor in October 2023 as part of a national Night-Time Advisor Pilot initiative in nine Irish towns and cities.

“I’ll be looking at the festival with a different hat on this year and that will shape how I view things,” Ms Collins says.

“It allows me to see the city in different ways. Before obviously I would have just looked at how the festival is doing but it’s a broader view about the city experience: I hope I’ll be able to facilitate that more in my role as nighttime economy advisor.”

Hyde Park Jazz band entertaining the crowds during the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival on Oliver Plunkett Street last year. File picture: Eddie O'Hare

In terms of the festival’s enduring popularity, Ms Collins credits Cork city’s compact size with a lot of the Jazz Festival’s unique atmosphere and buzz: 

“The fact that venues are within walkable distances means you never know who you are going to bump into.

“There are all these magic moments. You have the opportunity for big brass bands to meet and start jamming. 

“Or you’ll have a band walking home from a gig at half ten at night, and they are so full of enthusiasm that they will just stop and play a song or two on the street. 

“These things can only happen on the jazz weekend.

“People come to Cork for the jazz experience, but they leave with the Cork experience,” she says.

“They come with the hope of seeing jazz and with that sense of excitement, but they leave with a sense of the city and its community. It all lends itself to the magic of the weekend.”