The Sofa Sessions, Kilkenny announce an exciting Spring season of concerts, commencing Thursday 6^th February, featuring national and international musicians in the atmospheric Terrace Room at Billy Byrne’s. 

Musicians from the US, Japan, France, Germany and Venezuela join some of the finest Irish jazz musicians in an intimate, listener-friendly space that RTE Radio 1 has called ‘perhaps the best jazz venue in Ireland’.

The Sofa Sessions at Billy Byrne’s is thrilled to announce its Spring programme with an exciting and eclectic programme of fresh-sounding creative music, featuring some of the finest musicians on the national and international stage. Programmed by local musician and Irish Times jazz critic Cormac Larkin, the Sofa Sessions begins its fifth year of weekly concerts the next one being on Thursday February 13th, bringing high-level instrumentalists and acclaimed vocalists to the discerning Kilkenny audience.

Read more: Sofa Sessions Spring Season 2020

Birth of the Cool. On Jan 21st, 1949 the great jazz trumpeter Miles Davis assembled a nonet of four brass, two saxophones and three rhythm to record four tracks with eight more to come in April 1949 and March 1950. These recordings would make jazz history creating what we now call the “Birth of the Cool” sessions. Arrangements and compositions for the nonet were provided by Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, John Carisi and Miles himself. The music fused elements of classical harmony with the jazz rhythm section and is now considered as important as Duke Ellington’s 1940’s recordings or Miles’s later masterpiece “Kind of Blue”.

Read more: The Conor Guilfoyle Octet performs “Miles Davis’s BIRTH OF THE COOL” and West Coast Cool Jazz from...

This is the second video release from LL Grove band in a series of live recording sessions shot in 2019. These sessions are the first tunes to the upcoming album planning to come out this year (2020).

LL Groove Band started in Dublin in May 2019 created by French Bass player Léon Laisne after moving from Lyon (France) to Ireland in 2017 when he finished his studies in National music school (jazz).

Read more: The Journey - LL Groove Band – Video Release

K Quintet was formed in the summer of 2019. Lead by Irish double bassist David Duffy and dancer/singer Ksenia Parkhatskaya. Parkhatskaya a world renowned Charleston and solo jazz dancer was in need of some new classic jazz to perform to and approached Duffy to write some new compositions for trio, quartet and quintet.

The resulting debut album "Something Else" harkens back to the classic straight ahead jazz of the 60's and 70's, with names like Oscar Peterson, Red Garland, and Ben Webster as influences. To achieve this sound the two went to Vertigo Studios, and Ferran Donnatelli in Barcelona, a haven of vintage microphones, preamps, and to tape recording facilities to achieve that classic vibe. They assembled some of the leading jazz players from Barcelona and over two separate one day sessions created these recordings, a mixture of old standards and new compositions.

Read more: K Quintet "Something Else" Album Release

As with most interesting stories it started with a saxophone, then a google search, then an idea.  Roseanne Lynch actor, playwright and partner in Darn Skippy Productions had left her saxophone idle for some time much to the dismay of husband Richard Lennon who thought it was time she picked it back up again. He went out and bought her a set of reads and Roseanne played again.

She decided to look up female saxophonists on Google and found a radio documentary on Lyric FM by Marc Mc Menamin about Zandra Mitchell, Ireland’s first professional female saxophonist. Inspired by the story she decided to write a play about Zandra.

Read more: An Original Play About an Extraordinary Woman of Jazz

Dublin based, Venezuelan guitarist and composer, Orlando Molina, released  a new video of an original arrangement for solo guitar of a traditional Venezuelan folk song on 21^st of October.

The release of this video will mark the first of the series ‘Nunca Solo’ (Never Alone), in which the artist will be presenting musical arrangements and original compositions for solo guitar.

Directed and produced by Orlando and Ronald Guaramato, this video sets the context of a dark and melancholic night somewhere in the Venezuelan’s plains.

Read more: Orlando Molina – New Music Video Release

Grammy winner, Kurt Elling returns to the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival to play Cork City Hall next Saturday, 26th of October.  

The sensational jazz vocalist will be paying tribute to legends such as Nat ‘King’ Cole, Louis Armstrong, Billy Eckstine, Jon Hendricks plus many more in his ‘Century of Heroes’ performance. 

Read more: Grammy winner, Kurt Elling brings his Century of Heroes show to Guinness Cork Jazz 2019