If 1999 was a memorable year for jazz here, early indications are that 2000 will at least be as good and may well surpass it. Despite the fact that the main jazz festivals - in Cork, Dublin and the jazz element of the Belfast festival - have yet to declare their hands - just about every style and idiom, from mainstream to the clearly contemporary, and embracing some distant cousins in world music, will be heard here throughout the coming year.
This month's visitors alone will include some outstanding talents. The Improvised Music Company's Gerry Godley is bringing in the brilliant Finnish pianist, Jarmo Savolainen, along with one of the finest of the current crop in Italy, saxophonist Claudio Fasoli. They will play with the Guilfoyle brothers, Ronan and Conor, at Whelan's on January 30th. And the Triskel in Cork will feature two stellar international figures, bassist Lars Danielsson and drummer Adam Nussbaum, with local guitarist Mark O'Leary on January 15th.
Mainstream in January will be represented by tenor Scott Hamilton and clarinettist Kenny Davern. Hamilton is down to play two nights, January 19th and 20th, at Renards with a local rhythm section, while the Dublin Jazz Society is putting Davern on at the Stakis Hotel on January 27th, where he will play with Jim Doherty, Dave Fleming and John Wadham.
Shaping up in typically varied and adventurous fashion is the IMC's 2000 programme. Next month, American baritone saxophonist, Ronnie Cuber, will tour to Limerick, Belfast and Dublin accompanied by Tommy Halferty, Justin Carroll and Conor Guilfoyle. Later that month will see the group, Big Satan, with Tim Beirne (alto), Mark Ducret (guitar) and Tom Rainey (drums), arrive from the cutting edge Knitting Factory scene in New York.
The IMC's annual Open Day is set for Sunday, May 7th. A new touch will be the addition of an evening concert, this time featuring saxophonist Martin Speake leading a quartet which includes Bobo Stenson (piano), Mick Hutton (bass) and Paul Motian (drums). And it is planned to encourage emerging local talent by increasing the IMC's regular weekly Pendulum concerts to two nights a week from the middle of this month.
Early spring will see the IMC's World Music series, sponsored by the ESB, kick off with Musafir, a group from Rajasthan. They will be followed by Les Voix Mysteres, a 30-piece women's choir from Sofia and, later, a return visit by Juan Martin's Arte Flamenca Pura.
Ben Jackson's Note Productions will expand its Vicar Street concerts to seven this year, opening in March with an internationally acclaimed big band; the name can't be revealed at the moment. He's also hoping to bring pianist Brad Mehldau back, this time with his working trio - Larry Grenadier (bass) and Jorge Rossy (drums) - as part of this series, also sponsored by the ESB.
Outside the sponsored events, he is hoping to bring back singer Jimmy Scott and singer/pianist Diana Krall, both of whom filled Vicar Street last year.
There is more mainstream jazz organised by the Dublin Jazz Society. Guitarist and raconteur Marty Grosz will return on March 1st, this time to the Stakis Hotel. Scott Hamilton will be at the National Concert Hall on April 12th, this time with a touring group in Brian Lemon (piano), Michael Moore (bass) and Jake Hanna (drums) - internationally recognised big league material within the mainstream idiom. Also arriving under the DJS banner are tenor Harry Allen and clarinettist and tenor Ken Peplowski, due at the beginning and end of May respectively.
At Renards, March will see pianist John Colianni in a trio setting, while the same month will also welcome back Georgie Fame to the club. Also possible - but unconfirmed - at Renards are visits by the celebrated Blue Note altoist Lou Donaldson (April), and trumpeter Eddie Henderson (May), with pianist Alan Broadbent and guitarist Pat Martino further possible arrivals.
Brian Carson of Belfast's Moving On Music opens his new year schedule there with a concert by award-winning tenor Denys Baptiste's quartet, featuring Robert Mitchell (piano), Larry Bartley (bass) and Daniel Crosby (drums) at the BT Studio, Waterfront Hall on February 6th. Moving On Music will have guitarist Mike Nielsen with Jan zum Vohrde (flutes), Jesper Lundgaard (bass) and Kieran Phillips (drums) touring next month to Antrim (24th), Newtownards (25th), Portstewart (26th) and Belfast (27th), and Marilyn Crispell in for a solo concert in Belfast on March 2nd.
The Nielsen concerts are part of a February Music Network/ESB tour which also embraces Dublin (16th), Cork (17th), Kilkenny (18th), Clifden (20th), Castlebar (21st), Letterkenny (22nd) and Mullingar (23rd).
With the big festivals in this country all taking place later in the year, details are sketchy about potential line-ups. But the IMC's Dublin Jazz Week, which this year runs September 18th-24th, will definitely have a big contemporary American name; he's been confirmed to work "in an innovative context" with the RTE Concert Orchestra.
The Guinness Festival, which this year will run in Cork from October 27th to October 30th, is promised by a spokesman to be "a much younger line-up, like last year". Similarly, it's early days yet as far as the jazz line-up for the Belfast Festival is concerned and no details are available from Moving On Music.