Music

Three jazz concerts to catch in Dublin this week

The music of legend Weather Report gets covered and three up-and-coming groups show what they are made of

Bassist Barry Donohue leads his Plaza Real group, playing the music of the legendary Weather Report, at the Workman’s Club, Dublin on Sunday 15th.

Cormac Larkin's face
Cormac Larkin
Sat Jul 14 2018 - 05:00

Sunday, July 15th

Plaza Real

Workman's Club, Dublin, 7.30pm, €10, facebook.com/dublinjazzcoop

For discerning players of the electric bass, one name stands above all others and that name is Jaco Pastorius. Bassist Barry Donohue tours with Mary Coughlan and plays in guitarist Chris Guilfoyle’s superb Umbra, but when he’s left to his own devices, it’s the music of Weather Report, the band that Pastorius helped to define in the mid-1970s, that really gets his pulse racing. Joining Donohue is a cast of the similarly inclined, including OKO keyboardist Darragh O’Kelly, Cape Town saxophonist Chris Engel, with the unstoppable grooves provided by percussionist Eamon Cagney and drummer Shane O’Donovan. Repertory bands have a particular appeal because you kind of know what you’re going to hear, but where these talented 21st century musicians will take the fusion classics of Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, well, that’s the fun part.

Wednesday, July 18th

Parallel Society/ätsch/Galleries

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Workman's Club, Dublin, 8pm, €10, theworksmansclub.com

This promising triple bill is a chance to check out three up-and-coming groups on the burgeoning Dublin jazz scene for less than the price of a round of drinks: Parallel Society is German guitarist Jan Henrik Rau’s cosmopolitan five piece including Japanese saxophonist Yuzuha O’Halloran; ätsch is a “post-rock” four piece led by another Dublin-based German guitarist Mathias Winkler; and Galleries is a new three piece exploring the intersection of jazz with electronica, ambient and dance music. If you think you know what jazz sounds like, the sound of these young bands may come as something of a surprise.

Friday, July 20th

Michael Nielsen’s Crimo Trio

Fumbally Stables, Dublin, 9pm, €14, note.ie

Guitarist Mike Nielsen is certainly one of the most innovative European jazz musicians of his generation. Early in his career, the Sligo-born guitarist mastered the challenge of odd meters – his collaboration with the Guilfoyle brothers, “Fucked Up Standards”, remains a foundational text of the odd meter movement – but in the late 90s, Nielsen also began to study the world of microtonality, exploring the infinite spaces between what western music defines as “notes”. His collaborator in much of this has been Ellen Demos, and Nielsen’s new Crimo quartet matches the adventurous Boston-born vocalist with two young lions of the Irish scene, saxophonist Matthew Halpin and drummer Shane O’Donovan.