EntertainingSligo
SLIGO JAZZ FESTIVAL PROGRAMME LAUNCH
Sligo Jazz Project’s annual summer school and festival (July 24-29, 2018) is one of the country’s most unique niche tourism events. It is also regarded by many as Ireland’s only true remaining jazz festival, since almost all the events in its programme are based on jazz and improvised music, with virtually no “filler” gigs of rock and pop acts.
Eddie Lee, artistic director of Sligo Jazz Project gives us the festival run down. It sounds like we will need stamina. “At 4:30pm each day from Tuesday 24 to Saturday 28 July in Hargadons gastropub we have free world class jazz gigs featuring a whole range of jazz styles from Blues to Bebop. We have a 6pm jam session at the Riverside Hotel following that, then a world-class concert in the Hawk’s Well Theatre - incidentally they are our only pay-in events of the week - followed by a jam session and festival club at the Riverside. There’s a whole lot of music apart from that but thats the general pattern for the week and its pretty much wall to wall jazz. We try to put one world music act each year and this year its the return off the Olllam, the amazing Celtic fusion band which features’s Vulfpeck’s bass sensation Joe Dart, who is also giving a workshop - as far as I know Joe has never given masterclasses or workshops yet in this country or any others so it will be a wonderful opportunity to get inside the mind of a genius, with the help of another musical genius, Italian internet sensation Federico Malaman, who will host the event and perform on the double bill on 25 th July. There are lots of other musical treats including two big band nights and an amazing bunch of jazz singers on the opening night (24 th July) led by Liane Carroll. On Saturday 28th July we have continuous live music starting at 11am in Lyons Cafe and working its way through the town until the small hours of Sunday. I haven’t even mentioned the one hundred and twenty plus musicians who come to study on the summer school and learn from the masters but there are also some gems amongst them too, and they can be heard at the twice daily jam sessions in the Riverside and the final Sunday afternoon Big Bash which will take place this year in Andersons. Thats only scratching the surface, please have a look at the programme for a plethora of other events in the Riverside festival club, Tricky’s McGarrigles and other venues”.
Sligo Jazz Project will launch its programme culminating in a special night of Gypsy Jazz and Latin flavoured jazz in Hargadons on Thursday June 28th at 8pm. Music will be from Oleg Ponomarev, violin tutor on SJP who will be joined by fellow NoCrows members Steve Wickham, Felip Carbonell and Eddie Lee plus special guests.
LATE SUMMER CELEBRATION AT MARKREE CASTLE
Join us for a magnificent late summer soirée at Markree Castle. Begin the evening with a sparkling welcome in the lavish surroundings of the castle to the strains of some beautiful classical music. Enjoy an intimate performance by The Whileaways in the stunning castle chapel and a late summer feast in the Grand Hall. Sumptuous strings, a beguiling tapestry of harmonies and beautifully crafted original songs, will make this the summer’s most delicious event in aid of the Hawk’s Well’s Renovation Fund.
WOVEN SKULL & FUZZY HELL
The Model has collaborated with Sligo-based DIY record label Art for Blind on a new series of contemporary alternative Irish music. The series, which kicked off in May with Dublin dance-floor maestros I Am The Cosmos, will feature four acts in all over the course of 2018.
Next up is Woven Skull & Fuzzy Hell Woven Skull late in July.
In 2008, the core trio that make up Woven Skull began gathering together in the home of two of the members, set deep in the bogs and forests of County Leitrim. Several years experimenting with combinations of instrumentation, kitchen utensils, seashells, footsteps, chimes, recordings of cats purring and frogs mating led to their current sound which combines densely propulsive guitar, distorted mandola and endless cyclical rhythms. Woven Skull strip and scrape what they can out of minimal instrumentation to teeter on the brink of total sonic meltdown creating engulfing, raw primal drones and damaged rock manoeuvres; the result of which has often been described as the traditional music of a self-imagined land.
Fuzzy Hell
Mystery shrouds the identity of Fuzzy Hell. Could it be a side project of Kanye West’s? When he gets bored with his narcissistic thug / fashionista persona, he likes to sing sad songs about how awful life is, in the guise of an unassuming woman of vague ethnicity. “Yasmin appears to be the first name of the artist behind Fuzzy Hell – details about her are scarce beyond the first name, and perhaps that she’s based in the Irish midlands – and she deploys her searing folky songs with gentle psychedelic touches.” – Tristan Bath, The Quietus