Places filling up fast for 2024 jazz event

SLIGO JAZZ PROJECT IS A HIGHLIGHT OF THE SUMMER CALENDAR.

SLIGO Jazz Project’s 30-strong 2024 teaching faculty, hosting workshops masterclasses and ensemble sessions in 26 rooms at ATU Sligo this year, includes Grammy-winning and nominated musicians from the US and many award-winning UK artists too, professionals who have worked with Nina Simone, Chick Corea and Quincy Jones to name but a few.

The artist in residence and young artist in residence are both pianist-composers, US-based Cuban Elio Villafranca and award-winning Scottish musician and composer Fergus McCreadie respectively.

Sligo Jazz Project’s partnership with Music Generation Sligo is hugely important for aspiring young musicians in Sligo and beyond.

It has changed many young lives for the better and given some amazing opportunities to young people over the years. Some of those who spring to mind:

- SJP youth academy attendee Nils Kavanagh was the inaugural Young Irish Jazz Musician of the Year at Limerick Jazz Festival two years ago, has since been pursuing a professional career as a performer, composer and educator, was SJP’s inaugural Young Artist in Residence last year and is in his final year in the Royal Welsh Academy. Nils recorded his debut album last year and its due for release this summer on his next Irish tour.

- His brother Johannes is the first SJP alumnus to be accepted into the prestigious Hague Conservatoire, where he is in his first year of studies.

- Sligo drummer Sam Purcell won Dr David Lyttle’s Jazzlife bursary to be mentored by the MOBO-nominated Northern Irish musician for a year and plays professionally.

- Saxophonist Fraser Gaine attended SJP Youth Academy for many years and is a well known musician on the Galway scene and beyond.

- Pianist Conor Bastible is on the verge of graduating from Birmingham conservatoire and plays professionally on the UK jazz scene.

- The Murray brothers Conor (Bass) and Micheal (Alto Saxophone) from Donegal and Derryman Joseph Leighton (Guitar) are all working professional musicians on the international jazz scene, having achieved third level music degrees in Leeds and Glasgow, all having come through our youth academy.

- Matthew Halpin, one of the first young attendees at our summer school, is now saxophone professor at the Vienna conservatoire.

- Many of the above mentioned musicians are tutors each year on SJP’s summer school.

More about the Sligo Jazz Festival and Summer School 2024

Artist in Residence: Elio Villafranca (Cuba/USA)

Young Artist in Residence: Fergus McCreadie (UK)

With an impressive faculty mix of some of the New York scene’s finest and young rising jazz stars, Europe’s premier jazz education event, Sligo Jazz Project (SJP) has opened early this year for summer school bookings.

Sligo Jazz Project has been hosting Ireland’s biggest summer school in jazz and improvised music since 2006.

SJP’s 2023 drew 140 participants to Yeats Country for six days of workshops, masterclasses, jam sessions and a full-blown international jazz festival.

The 2024 event, which runs from July 23-28, promises to be even bigger than previous years, with the addition of Cuban born composer/pianist Elio Villafranca leading a 31-strong faculty as Artist in Residence, along with a core group of his musical cohorts to bolster an already strong summer school and festival faculty.

Elio will be joined by four of his chosen musicians in providing Sligo’s summer school participants with equal measures of education inspiration and entertainment this July: renowned Count Basie Orchestra trumpeter Freddie Hendrix, Cuban saxophonist Alejandro Aviles, drummer Dion Parson and bassist Manel Fortia, all of whom are, like Elio Villafranca himself, leading exponents of Afro- Caribbean jazz.

Along with the strong Afro- Caribbean flavour, this year’s Sligo event will be a continuation of Sligo Jazz Project’s showcasing of young rising stars in the jazz world, with the second year of SJP’s Young Artist in Residence chair, this year occupied by award-winning Scottish pianist Fergus McCreadie.

Also providing youthful energy to SJP’s 2024 faculty will be dynamic Korean drummer Sun-Mi Hong, Italian guitarist Eleonora Strino, UK guitarist Tom Ollendorff, Irish Young Jazz Musician of the Year and last year’s Young Artist in Residence, Nils Kavanagh, guitarist Joseph Leighton, bassist Conor Murray and Austrian vocalist Veronika Morscher who joins vocalese specialist Anita Wardell (UK) and Ireland’s own Christine Tobin in the voice faculty.

Some of the UK’s best are on SJP’s 2024 faculty too, including a flute tutor for the first time at SJP: award-winning British instrumentalist Gareth Lockrane, who joins saxophonist Julian Siegel and drummer Paul Clarvis in Sligo.

Many of Ireland’s finest jazz musicians, north and south, will be also present such as pianist Scott Flanigan, trumpeter Linley Hamilton and saxophonists Cathal Roche and Matthew Halpin.

Sligo Jazz Project for the first time has offered an Ultra-Early Bird rate to its participants at rock-bottom rates which only applies until the end of February.

Accommodation is available very close to the summer school, not included in the summer school price, more details on sligojazz.ie.