Today is World Jazz Day and, as part of the celebrations, a global concert will be broadcast live from Hagia Irene in Istanbul from 7pm on jazzday.com. Among the performers taking part are John Beasley, George Duke, Robert Glasper, Herbie Hancock, Dianne Reeves, Joss Stone, Marcus Miller, Esperanza Spalding and many more.
For something a little closer to home, you could check out the Bray Jazz Festival, which takes place this weekend (see our Culture section for Q&As with some of the international performers). Or, to get your fingers clicking without leaving your desk, check out these videos from this year's 12 Points jazz festival, which took place in February in the Project Arts Centre in Dublin. Here are three of our highlights from the new-music festival, with excerpts from the
Irish Times
reviews of the shows.
Reviews by Laurence Mackin
Videos by Cormac Larkin of Hatch 21 Productions
Soil Collectors
Soil Collectors tap into Nordic choral traditions, with strong ecological themes wrapped in mystical shamanism to create music that veers between the sublime and the terrifying. Isabel Sörling and Hannah Tolf use their cathedral-sized ranges to create soaring, almost unearthly harmonies that are looped and filtered live through a series of pedals, while Jonathan Albrektsson adds primal pulse and dynamics on drums and percussion. This is elemental stuff, and a barely believable musical experience that's a privilege to witness.
Nikolas Anadolis
Nikolas Anadolis is technically formidable behind the grand piano, throwing a torrent of notes at every song and barely pausing for breath while the crowd hold theirs. He is perhaps the most technically gifted musician at the 12 Points festival, and douses each song in reams of ideas with a blistering performance, although he never looks out of control or troubled. Being in the audience for an Anadolis concert in a venue this small certainly seems like a privilege that might never be repeated.
Koenigleopold
Koenigleopold are a frankly deranged set-up of drums, synths, loops, vocals, piano, sounds, madness, rap, spoken word, terribly clothing, a bag full of tricks and one small stuffed monkey - and there are only two people on stage.
This sounds like a car crash, but it’s far from it. The duo have such a great sense of humour and an astute sense of theatrics about what they do that they could play a set of Chris de Burgh numbers and the crowd would happily go along with it. They are also deeply talented musicians and while the set is chaotic, it is a controlled, tempered chaos. This is an anarchic, defiantly brilliant set of challenging music.
