Irish Examiner view: Missing the joy of live music

The Cork Jazz Festival was due to be held over the bank holiday weekend.

The Metropole Hotel spiritual home of the Cork Jazz Festival. File picture. 

IN his latest book, What Is Beautiful In The Sky, that most lyrical of writers Michael Harding laments the death of live music during the pandemic. 

“There was nothing really quite like the wildness of a good session.. It was soul music. And joyful. And now it’s gone.” He was recalling the wonder of traditional music played in tiny rural pubs but his words could just as easily apply to major events such as the annual Cork Jazz Festival which was due to be held over the bank holiday weekend.

Founded in 1978 and inspired by Jim Mountjoy, then marketing manager of the festival’s spiritual home, the Metropole Hotel on MacCurtain Street, it has hosted some of the greatest names in jazz over the years. Starting with Ronnie Scott, the festival welcomed famous names like singer Ella Fitzgerald, tenor sax legend Sonnie Rollins, and band leader Dizzie Gillespie in the early years, and later went on to nurture new talent from home and abroad.

It quickly spread beyond the city centre, with jazz events as far as Crosshaven and Kinsale. It also spread beyond the reach of local, older jazz aficionados, attracting new and younger fans and also many from abroad who enjoyed the craic almost as much the music.

With the advent of the dark days of winter, the end of October was the perfect time for such joie de vivre. We look forward to the day when the saints go marching in again.