The best jazz gigs happening across Ireland this week

Saturday, August 31st

Paul Dunlea & Cormac McCarthy
Triskel Arts Centre, Cork
triskelartscentre.ie
Over the course of the last five years or so, trombonist Paul Dunlea has become a major force in jazz, not just in his native Cork but internationally.

Recently returned from a European tour with Michael Bublé’s band, Dunlea is a talented composer and arranger for several fine ensembles, organiser of the Tuesday night jam sessions at Cork’s Crane Lane Theatre, and, not least, a forceful and creative performer on one of the rarest and most demanding instruments in jazz.

For the latest in Triskel’s Summer Jazz Series, he joins his longtime collaborator, Cork pianist Cormac McCarthy, one of the few Irish jazz musicians to engage fruitfully with Irish traditional music.

Sunday, September 1st

Ätsch
Workman's Club, Dublin
facebook.com/dublinjazzcoop
The curatorial baton at the Dublin Jazz Co-Op passes to Dublin-based German guitarist Matthias Winkler this month and his first call is the band he knows won't say no – his own.

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Ätsch, with pianist Graeme Bourke, drummer Hugh Denman and bassist Eoin O’Halloran, have been playing regularly together since 2016 so their bright, optimistic sound, sitting somewhere between the Pat Metheny Group and Sigur Rós, is honed and polished.

It will be interesting to see where Winkler’s curation takes the admirably eclectic Co-Op series in the weeks ahead – for those who want to keep a finger on the pulse of the capital’s creative music scene, weekly attendance at this small room overlooking the Liffey is all but compulsory.

Thursday, September 5th

Signal Series: F-JOB & Joe O'Callaghan Trio
Arthurs, Dublin
improvisedmusic.ie
The Improvised Music Company's monthly Signal Series, showcasing the best of the domestic jazz scene, relocates to Arthurs on Thomas street this month with a particularly strong line-up.

F-JOB are a forward-looking piano trio in which, unusually, all parties to the trio share an equal creative input, with drummer Matthew Jacobson, bassist Cormac O’Brien and pianist Greg Felton all contributing tunes and ideas to the group’s exhilarating, rhythmically dense sound.

Tipperary guitarist Joe O’Callaghan’s trio might bear his name, and play his tunes, but despite an impressive command of his own instrument, the unassuming guitarist gives plenty of space to his equally impressive band mates, pianist Izumi Kimura and bassist Derek Whyte, to put their own mark on the music.

JazzGate: The Music of John Coltrane
Black Gate, Galway
blackgate.ie
Aengus Hackett may be onto something here – his weekly JazzGate concerts, each dedicated to a different icon of jazz, are drawing ever larger crowds and last month's celebration of the music of Billie Holiday sold out – twice.

Now the Galway guitarist turns his attention to the motherlode of post-bop US jazz, the music of the great John Coltrane. From his early hard-bop recordings, to the creative peaks of his great quartet, to the still challenging freedom of his later period, the North Carolina-born saxophonist stands alone as the single most influential figure in jazz since Charlie Parker.

Thoughtful and talented Headford saxophonist Matthew Berrill steps up for this one, with bassist Dan Bodwell and drummer Barry Duffy joining Hackett in support.

Friday, September 6th

Susannah De Wrixon
National Concert Hall, Dublin
nch.ie
Vocalist Susannah De Wrixon renews her longstanding acquaintance with two of Irish jazz's most venerable musicians – pianist Jim Doherty and bassist Dave Fleming – for Susannah with Strings Attached, a cakewalk through the Great American Songbook in the company of the Delmaine String Quartet.

A noted actor as well as a talented singer, De Wrixon brings an actor’s awareness of lyrics to classics like Cole Porter’s I Concentrate on You, Jimmy Van Heusen’s Here’s That Rainy Day and Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s Satin Doll.

Sunday, September 8th

Richie Buckley Quintet
Arthurs, Dublin
arthurspub.ie
Saxophonist Richie Buckley is the sideman par excellence, with an impressive, frankly improbable list of credits that runs all the way from Jiggs Wigham and Freddie Hubbard to Van Morrison and Bob Dylan with detours via Barry Manilow and Riverdance.

But the elder of the talented Buckley brothers is at his best when he can cut loose with a hard-swinging band playing the standard repertoire, and that is exactly what his own quintet is set up to deliver, with the mainstream A-team of pianist Myles Drennan, guitarist John Moriarty, bassist Dave Redmond and drummer Kevin Brady capable of launching Buckley into that zone that has made the saxophonist one of the best-loved musicians on the Irish jazz scene.