When the first Arthur’s Jazz Jam took place on 17 January 2024, it began what would become a regular meeting point for musicians and listeners on Dublin’s jazz scene. Now, more than two and a half years later, the jam is entering a new chapter, relaunching as a weekly Monday-night fixture at Arthur’s Blues & Jazz Club through the end of 2026.
Led by saxophonist and flautist Hayley Kavanagh and guitarist Eric Doyle under their Cookin’ Dublin banner, the jam has become about considerably more than filling a Monday night.
It provides a high-quality but financially accessible night of live music, while creating a space where professional and emerging musicians can meet on the bandstand.
Each session opens with an invited band of working jazz musicians before moving into an open jam, operated through a sign-up list. For professional players, it offers an opportunity to perform with musicians they may not ordinarily work with and to try new ideas in a live setting. For emerging musicians, it provides valuable stage time alongside more experienced players in a real performance environment.
There is an audience dimension too. The intention is not simply to provide somewhere for musicians to jam, but to present an accessible night of jazz in an authentic setting that can introduce listeners to established and emerging players alike.
And Arthur’s is an appropriate home for it. The Thomas Street venue has become one of Dublin’s most consistent homes for jazz, presenting everything from emerging artists and jam sessions to established Irish and international musicians.
Cookin’ Dublin
Hayley Kavanagh and Eric Doyle returned to Ireland in 2023 after spending seven years living and performing in Prague and Berlin.
Since then, the pair have thrown themselves into Dublin’s jazz community as performers, organisers and advocates, co-founding Cookin’ Dublin as a platform for their jam sessions and other activity within the scene.
The philosophy behind much of their work is relatively simple: create opportunities for musicians to play, encourage connections between musicians at different stages of their careers, and contribute to the community surrounding the music.
That approach led to the establishment of Arthur’s Jazz Jam in January 2024 and has subsequently extended into other projects.
Jazz Ireland readers will also know Hayley and Eric as the team behind In the Groove, our video interview series exploring the musicians who make up Ireland’s jazz community. Since its launch, the series has given musicians the space to talk in depth about their music, influences, careers and experiences, adding another dimension to the work the pair have been doing away from the bandstand.
Hayley Kavanagh
Alongside her work with Cookin’ Dublin and Arthur’s Jazz Jam, Kavanagh has steadily developed her own voice as a saxophonist, flautist, composer and bandleader.
Since returning to Ireland she has become a familiar presence across the Dublin scene, leading her own ensembles while also working as an increasingly in-demand collaborator. Recent credits include performances with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra Big Band and Linley Hamilton, alongside appearances with a wide range of Irish improvising musicians. She also sits on the board of the Dublin Jazz Co-op.
Her own music draws strongly on the hard-bop and post-bop traditions while increasingly making room for her original compositions.
That work has begun attracting wider attention.
A 2025 appearance at Scott’s Jazz Club in Belfast brought Kavanagh to the venue’s Jazz Futures series and subsequently received a full review in All About Jazz. Later that year, her quintet appeared at The Cooler, where The Journal of Music described her as having become “a key figure in the capital’s jazz scene” since her return to Ireland.
In 2026, Kavanagh was selected as the Kildare Jazz Festival Emerging Act, opening the festival at Riverbank Arts Centre with a quintet featuring Scott Flanigan, Eric Doyle, Dave Redmond and Michael McCarthy.
It has been a considerable amount of activity in a relatively short period of time, but there is a particularly fitting connection between Kavanagh’s development as a musician and her involvement with Arthur’s.
Jam sessions were an important part of her own development as an improvising musician during her years abroad. Today, she is helping provide that same kind of environment for another generation of players in Dublin.
Eric Doyle
Eric Doyle has been equally busy, both alongside Kavanagh and through projects of his own.
A guitarist firmly rooted in the jazz tradition, Doyle has increasingly turned his attention towards creating regular opportunities for the music to be heard around Dublin.
Among these is Red Line Jazz at The Circular, a regular night built around a changing group of Dublin musicians playing hard-bop, post-bop and contemporary jazz. The personnel may change, but the idea remains consistent: a regular home for serious, swinging jazz.
He has also established Jazz at Hynes’, another residency centred around the Eric Doyle Trio and repertoire drawing inspiration from guitarists including Grant Green, Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall and Peter Bernstein, alongside figures such as Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk.
More recently, Doyle brought his own sextet to Arthur’s for a concert dedicated to Grant Green’s Idle Moments, performing the landmark album in full alongside other music from Green’s early career.
His contribution has extended beyond performing and organising too. Doyle has written album reviews for Jazz Ireland, bringing the perspective of a working musician to new releases while continuing his work with Kavanagh on In the Groove, Cookin’ Dublin and the Arthur’s jam.
Taken together, these activities might appear relatively modest individually: a residency here, a jam there, an album review, an interview or another gig.
Collectively, however, they are precisely the kind of activity from which a healthy jazz scene grows.
Building a Scene One Monday at a Time
Jazz scenes aren't sustained by major festivals and headline concerts alone.
They also need small rooms and regular nights. They need places where musicians can meet one another, where an emerging player can perform alongside someone with years of experience, where a new group or musical idea can be tried out, and where audiences can discover musicians without necessarily knowing who they are before walking through the door.
Jam sessions have always played an important role in that ecosystem.
Since returning to Ireland in 2023, Hayley Kavanagh and Eric Doyle have increasingly found themselves working on both sides of that equation. They are developing their own careers as musicians while simultaneously creating opportunities and platforms for others.
Through Cookin’ Dublin, their residencies and regular sessions, In the Groove and Arthur’s Jazz Jam, they have helped create more opportunities for musicians to perform, collaborate and connect with audiences.
More than two and a half years after that first jam in January 2024, its relaunch therefore feels less like starting again and more like the next stage of something that has steadily taken root.
Arthur’s Jazz Jam takes place every Monday at Arthur’s Blues & Jazz Club, Thomas Street, Dublin, through the end of 2026. Doors are at 8pm, with music from 8:30pm. Musicians are welcome to join the jam, with a full backline provided.
