Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

This year’s Guinness Jazz Festival brought an exciting mix of styles to Cork and showed a musical event can be esoteric and accessible at the same time, writes KEVIN STEVENS

‘JAZZ,” DRUMMER Art Blakey said, “washes away the dust of everyday life.” If so, then the streets of Cork must be glistening today after a long weekend of occasional rain showers and constant music. This year’s Guinness Jazz Festival featured, as it has for many years, a huge range of musical options, some of which satisfied jazz purists and many of which did not. But as you would expect from a festival that attracts 50,000 attendees and over 1,000 musicians from all over the world, the emphasis is on diversity: geographic, ethnic, musical. And diversity, as this festival has proven time and again, is the lifeblood of jazz.