All that jazz? Cork festival’s programme divides fans

There were two testing questions being asked more than any other in Cork over the weekend – what is and isn't jazz?

More than any other year in its 35-year-plus history, perhaps, the over-stretching of genre parameters at the Guinness Jazz Festival in 2015 has exercised people to the point where debate crosses over into argument.

Festival director Rory Sheridan unapologetically points to the event being a commercial venture. "A number of years ago we were programming almost exclusively jazz, but it got to a stage where tickets weren't selling as strongly as we would have liked," he says.

"We need to fill theatres, pubs and clubs. We followed some of the models that were in place by some of the other international jazz festivals – typically Montreux and Montreal – to have a much broader music appeal. Ireland is a relatively small market to have one festival focusing on only one style of music, and jazz fans don't necessarily mobilise themselves to attend festivals. So, in order to keep the festival alive, we felt we had to broaden the appeal."

Despite the standard supply and demand business model, Sheridan states that the sponsors will this week be conducting a post-festival audit in programming and commercial terms.

“We think it’s time to have a strategic review. The reason for this is to make the festival bigger and better. There is no other objective – it’s all about Cork, it’s all about jazz, and we’re committed to it as an organisation.”

According to acclaimed Irish jazz musician Ronan Guilfoyle, whose family unit, 3G - the Guilfoyles, performed at Triskel Christchurch at the weekend, there are two different agendas going on.

“The sponsor is getting bang for their buck, but they also see the value of having a quality jazz programme within the bigger behemoth that is now the Cork Jazz Festival,” he said.

“I know some of my fellow musicians and jazz lovers get outraged by non-jazz acts on the line-ups, and I see their point. Yet at the same time, the festival is keeping the specialist programme going, and as long as that happens then it has value for musicians.”

Guilfoyle said the reality is that some kinds of music will pack out venues but other types won’t.

“The Triskel and the Everyman theatre will be packed, and for me that’s a very fine thing. If the festival were to put more commercial acts on in all the venues then I think it’d be valid to get upset. The reason I’m not is because I see it as being part of a bigger trend everywhere.”

Trends alter course as often as wind changes direction, but there's no doubt there's a disconnect between the jazz fan who can join the dots between Dinah and Kamasi Washington, and the jazz fan who'd prefer to hear yet another lubricated rendition of Moondance.

The Cork Jazz Festival is currently weighted more towards the latter than the former, something that Tony Sheehan, artistic director of Triskel Arts Centre, would like to see changing.

“In fairness to the festival,” he says, “they give me quite an amount of latitude in how to programme our venue. Some venues will simply receive whatever they’re given, but the relationship between Triskel and the festival – particularly with Jack McGouran, Cork Jazz Festival artistic director – is that they understand what we’re trying to do, and they try to facilitate it.”

He said it was “pretty clear what side we’re on” in the jazz/not jazz discourse, “but at the same time, what with running a venue myself, I know it is difficult to sell tickets. So yes, the festival is more than about jazz, but there’s no point in calling it a jazz festival if it isn’t going to be that.”

Sheridan says the festival “is untapped in terms of its potential” and that organisers are looking at what might be possible moving forward.

“We will do something – some course, direction – but I don’t know what it’s going to be just yet. We don’t want to go too broad, though, and we want to make sure that it’s credible.”

The Cork Jazz Festival concludes today, with a performance by The Drifters at the Opera House at 8pm.

Jazz? Definitely not. The debate continues.