Top five Irish jazz albums of 2024, from Mary Coughlan to Adjunct Ensemble
‘Thank God I’m alive,’ Mary Coughlan sings on her album Repeat, Rewind. Hear, hear
Marilyn Mazur Special 4 at Cork Jazz Festival 2024 review: Rhythm, movement and enchantment brilliantly to the fore
The shapeshifting percussionist, who played vital roles in bands led by Miles Davis and Jan Garbarek, leads an absorbing 70-minute set
Gregory Porter review: Cork Jazz Festival at its best, with music that reaches out and welcomes you in
The Grammy winner gets his biggest cheer for Hey Laura, but Porter standards such as Liquid Spirit and Mister Holland are no less rapturously received
Danish guitarist Jakob Bro on Paul Motian: ‘It was the most surreal thing ever, like calling someone from a different planet’
Cork Jazz Festival 2024: Bro got his big break when the renowned drummer Motian asked him to join his band
Nubya Garcia: Odyssey – An exhilarating mix of jazz, reggae, dub, neosoul and R&B
This multilayered and carefully crafted music feels like a significant step forward
Arooj Aftab: ‘If we all listened to more things that surprise us, we’d all be better for it’
Nobody does sound design like the Pakistani-raised singer and producer, whose new album is ‘about being flirty and crazy’ and who will soon seduce Dublin
Ezra Collective: ‘The Irish and Nigerians have got a lot more in common than Guinness!’
Ezra Collective’s new album, an ‘ode to the sacred act of dancing’, could be set in a church or at a carnival, wedding or even funeral, says Femi Koleoso
Milton Nascimento and Esperanza Spalding: Milton + Esperanza – Mini-masterpiece with the near-magical melding of two voices
Spalding’s bright, airy vocals and Nascimento’s plaintive tenor and ethereal falsetto seem as if they were made for each other
Lux Quartet: Tomorrowland – Brilliant, seamless debut from an outstanding, forward-thinking new jazz quartet
All the tunes has an inherent sense of strength and freedom, form and abstraction; they are like structures without walls
Matt Wilson: Good Trouble – Right from the first notes, you know you’re in expert hands
Latest album by criminally underappreciated New York-based drummer (59) will put a smile on your face
Arooj Aftab: Night Reign – Powerful, affecting and unlike anything else
The fourth album from Pakistani-American singer and composer is set to continue her ascent from secret treasure to irresistible purveyor of ‘global soul’
Saxophonist Linda Fredriksson: ‘If I’m able to reach somebody who is not a jazz enthusiast or nerd, that’s the best possible goal’
Finnish musician on their album Juniper and preference for the baritone which ranges from ‘soft and tender, and sweet and beautiful, to roughness, horror, terror and pain’
Kamasi Washington: Fearless Movement – Somehow both more and less than The Epic and Heaven and Earth
For his first album in six years, Kamasi Washington - the most influential jazz musician of the 21st century - offers an immense, multilayered work that could be described as the aural equivalent of Los Angeles
Dave Douglas: ‘I wanted my music to be authentic and never the same twice. So there were a lot of years in the wilderness’
Bray Jazz Festival 2024: Like his hero Miles Davis, the trumpeter, composer and bandleader is fascinated by the dynamics of change
Bill Frisell: Orchestras – Guitarist, trio and ensembles become one multifaceted whole
Double release of concert-hall recordings features influential American’s regular trio plus Brussels Philharmonic and Umbria Jazz Orchestra