Mike Nielsen's first teacher was his father, a dixieland trumpeter who moved to Sligo from Denmark to set up a lock factory. "He gave me 10p every time I'd transpose a tune into a different key." Now a gifted jazz guitarist his 30s, Nielsen has been playing music since the age of four, when his father bought him a ukelele.
Nielsen is philosophical about jazz and the guitar. "One of the most important things is to try to tap into the subconscious where you don't think about what you're playing," he says. "You just play." Nielsen, whose style derives from the classical idiom, sees the jazz sound as a "flavour" of music, linked tightly to the personality of the player.
Drinking tea in a Dublin cafe crowded with Saturday afternoon shoppers, he outlines his thinking. "Everybody is different - as long as you're true to what you like, and not what someone else likes, then that's true," he says.
"If there's a great player from any era, there's something there that people cannot get back. There are certain influences in their life that they cannot deny, so they cannot play like me or any other player. Otherwise they're denying their own roots. Theoretically, no two people should sound the same. If they do then they're denying their own lives and their own experience."
Growing up in Strandhill, Co Sligo, he played various musical styles on the guitar and spent a considerable period in his 20s devoted to classical music. But he finds more fulfilment playing jazz.
Neilsen is a lucid and quietly dramatic guitarist, who has made more than 10 recordings. There is plenty of brio and tension in the music, and colour too, with great melodic flourishes and a keen sense of sophistication and imagination. Pensive at times, it is an elaborate and attractive sound. If seen, it would look glamorous.
"I try to pick the notes as opposed to slurring them," he says. The result is a sense of strings and fingers hard at work beneath the surface of the melody. Almost unnoticed, the sensation is similar to a swan paddling underwater while seeming to glide on the surface.
Next Wednesday, Nielsen starts an 11-venue tour of the Republic and North in a quartet with Dublin drummer Kieran Phillips and, from Denmark, bassist Jesper Lundgaard and sax and flute player Jan zum Vohrde. Mainly featuring music by the Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobin, the Visit to Rio programme also includes Nielsen's own compositions.
"He wrote the most popular of the Latin standards," says Nielsen of Jobin, who was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1927. "I've rearranged some of the stuff, but not all of it, to bring it into the style of what I usually do. I knew I could do something with it."
Nielsen's focus is live performance. He sets high standards. "If you go on stage and you mess up, you have to ask why you are doing this in the first place. If I'm doing that and I'm nervous I might as well take another job."
How spontaneous is the music? "It depends on the vehicle. That's why I'm doing solo [recordings] at the moment, because it gives you some spontaneity. With people in a band, it depends how open they are. Your imagination is the only barrier."
Nielsen teaches at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama and at Newpark Music Centre in Blackrock, Co Dublin. Formerly, he was jazz tutor at Queen's University in Belfast. "When I'm teaching, I like to give my utmost," he says. "I've learned an awful lot from teaching because you learn to impart the knowledge. You solidify all the theory in your head as well."
How does this process work? "It's very hard to force jazz on someone. Starting a kid with something they really like is the most important thing. If a kid's eyes light up when I start to play something, then that's what I start with. I like to be able to try to get the best out of a student from the beginning. To see them enjoying it, even if they don't bring to a high level, it's great to see."
Of course Nielsen has learned much from his own teachers, first of whom was his father. Later he played in bands at dancehalls and pubs. He practised in the morning before going to school and spent a lot of time transposing music from records. Sonny Rollins and Joe Pass were particular influences.
Soon after he left school, Nielsen went "bald-headed" for classical music when he heard a prelude by the Brazilian composer Hector Villa Lobos on a visit to Denmark. He studied at the Copenhagen Conservatory of Music and, later, attended the Royal Irish Academy of Music and DIT College of Music in Dublin. A scholarship to study for two years at the respected Berklee College, Boston, followed.
There, he immersed himself in arranging, composition, harmony and the day-today business of playing guitar. "There were a few good players at every instrument. They weren't all brilliant, contrary to what you'd think."
This was crucial period. "Apart from transcribing from records, there was no place to learn. I needed to get more information and order on the theory of jazz." At one stage, Nielsen was playing guitar for 14 hours a day. "If I had thought about it, I'd probably do one hour."
Returning to Dublin in the mid-1980s, Nielsen had decided to devote himself to jazz. He played with various musicians including saxophonists Gay McIntyre and Rory McGuinness. Louis Stewart, not surprisingly, was a major influence. Of the Americans, Nielsen has a high regard for pianist Keith Jarrett and the late saxophonist extraordinaire, John Coletrane.
Has he any plans to learn another instrument? "Maybe in the next lifetime. There's not enough time to all the music on the guitar. I don't think the fire is ever relinquished in terms of learning musical knowledge."
Explaining jazz is straightforward. "The sound or flavour is like bepop, like Charlie Parker. Jazz has to have that flavour."
Sponsored by Music Network/ESB, the Mike Nielsen Quartet play the Coach House, Dublin Castle on February 16th; Cork Institute of Technology on February 17th; The Mousetrap, Kilkenny on February 18th; The Alcock & Brown Hotel, Clifden, Co Galway on February 20th; Linenhall Arts Centre, Castlebar, Co Mayo on February 21st; Letterkenny Arts Centre on February 22nd; Mullingar Arts Centre on February 23rd; Clotworthy Arts Centre, Antrim, on February 24th; Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards, on February 25th; Flowerfield Arts Centre, Portstewart, on February 26th; and Waterfront Hall, Belfast, on February 27th
