Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
*In this brand-new series, journalist and spoken word artist Cormac Fitzgerald travels to a different town or suburb each week to cover the gigs and cultural experiences you rarely see covered by Irish media outlets. *
This week’s subject: A jazz jam in Smithfield.
IT’S A LAZY Sunday evening and I find myself in The Hendrick Hotel in Smithfield in Dublin City.
People come and go through the foyer and out into the grey, overcast street.
At the bar, some guests are chatting and laughing over glasses of wine and beer as the bartender wipes down the counter. Others sit around on chairs, finishing food or staring at their phones.
In front of a wide window facing out onto Hendrick Street, the jazz players are setting up – the drums are being tightened, instruments tuned, mic and keyboard plugged into the PA.
With everything in order, just after 6:30pm, the signal is given to cut the tinny pop music playing over the hotel speakers, and the group strikes up the first few notes of Tenderly.
Is there any song that better typifies a slow Sunday evening?
The long, languorous intro notes on the trumpet, and the soft keyboard keys make you want to curl up on a couch and forget about the rest of the world – to push inevitable Monday back a few more hours.
Tenderly was first recorded in 1947 and has since become a jazz standard, a widely known song that most jazz musicians should have an idea of how to play. I’ve always loved the Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong version, with the two going verse for verse in between that beautiful trumpet.
There’s no singer for this rendition of Tenderly, but the effect is still the same. Graham Wood is leading on the trumpet, accompanied by Cliff Rosney on the keyboard, Feargal McGirl on bass, and Michael Kruszewzki on drums.
The band are tight, delivering a lovely version of the classic tune – they take turns with short solos and generally gel well together.
If you don’t have much of a clue about jazz (I don’t) you might think that this is a professional band hired by the hotel to provide a bit of mood music on a Sunday. You would be wrong.
I am at this week’s meeting of the Dublin Jazz Jam Sessions, a place for professional jazz musicians and committed amateurs to get together to jam.
The group usually meets four times a month in different venues across Dublin, like The International Bar (see last week’s story) or the Bohemian in Dublin.
The format is simple: show up with or without your instrument (there will always be a keyboard, drums or guitar) and take turns joining in the session. There is no cover charge or fee, and you never know who is going to turn up.
Well, except for Graham Wood, who has been organising the sessions for the past 10 years and is a fixture at the sessions.
“I always do the organising but I don’t always attend – most of them I would be there, though,” he tells me.
If you ask my wife she’d say I’m at all of them, I’m sure.
Originally from Scotland but living in Ireland for decades, Wood has been playing the trumpet for nearly 50 years. He is unassuming, laid back and friendly. A good man to organise this most chill of evenings.
“I like just playing the music that I really like and I don’t have to practice and if I do it wrong it’s fine,” he says of the atmosphere at the session.
“The more wrong I do it the more it encourages other people to join in. And sometimes you get to hear fabulous bands for nothing and it feels really nice.”
Every night is different, he says. You never know what passing musician might turn up and what they might bring to the evening.
“There is a core of 30-40 people who turn up 12 at a time,” he explains.
“The average would be 12, a busy one would be 20 and a quiet one would be six. And if we get less than six we have to call it off. That’s happened sometimes, but not much.”
This evening, there are about 15 musicians in all, including multiple keyboardists, saxophonists of varying types, guitarists, bass players, drummers and a singer. In my (admittedly, limited) experience they all range from excellent to incredible and I am amazed at how well all the different combinations of people gel together.
Everyone is open and welcoming, with a number of people approaching me to ask was I a musician and inviting me to join in.
“How do you play the journalism?” One man asks me when I tell him I am a journalist.
The musicians rotate every couple of songs or so, depending on who is present. Usually, the trumpet or saxophone or singer will call the tune and the key, and the other musicians will follow along. There are tablets displaying an app called iRealPro that allows people to follow along the chords in whatever key is chosen.
“It’s fantastic. Every situation pushes you on,” says Cliff Rosney, a keyboardist who has been coming to the jams for about a year.
“You find yourself in a situation where you’re playing a tune you never played with musicians you never met before, and it makes you a better musician.
I really have respect for the guys who have been doing this for years. It’s great for everyone.
Another keyboardist, Mary Murphy, has been playing jazz for about eight years, and piano her whole life.
“When I came first I hadn’t a bog’s notion about how to play,” she tells me. Initially, she got by playing with the volume turned down in the mix.
“But they were really encouraging, so I kept at it, and now I am kind of at the point where I can hold my own.
You constantly have to be in tune with the other musicians, which is great. Your ears have to be really listening to what’s going on.
Despite not knowing my arse from my alto when it comes to jazz music, even I can tell that the chill atmosphere belies the professionalism and ability present in the hotel. These are serious musicians who have been playing together and separately for many years.
While the atmosphere is open and welcoming, you would want to know what you were doing before deciding to get up on stage.
“There are written rules and unwritten rules in jazz,” says keyboardist Luca Eremita as we watch the current set up work their way through a series of solos.
Eremita is able to tell me which musician will take the lead next before they do, underscoring the hidden language beneath the improvised playing that I don’t understand.
It really is a great way to pass a few hours at the end of the weekend. After Tenderly, the musicians work through a number well-known and not-so-well-known standards like On the Sunny Side of the Street, St Thomas, and Sister Sadie, among others, over the course of two lovely hours.
There are some beautiful solos throughout, including one brilliant sustained whack of the drums later on in evening from Michael Kruszewzki.
A professional German saxophonist, Felix Wahnschaffe, is visiting Ireland with his family and joins in for a few songs, adding his own style. Another saxophonist, Chris Turner, encourages anyone who might like to get up on stage.
There is a young singer, Nina Dobrzanska, who is there with her father, guitarist Jarek Dobrzanski, and who sings three songs in a low register. She is just 17 but sings of love in a world-weary way as though she has had her heart broken countless times.
“I really do like these sessions, especially here,” she says.
I really like the sound and I think the musicians here are really chill and laid back and they’ve loads of experience.
As the evening progresses and I click my fingers to the rhythm, I get that feeling of appreciation for all the hard work people put into the thing they love.
Everyone here has had to practice for so many hours to be able to sit or stand on the stage playing so casually. Beneath the chill atmosphere are countless hours of repetition and frustration. All that time sitting alone in rooms before you can come together.
And then I and others get to appreciate the fruits of all that labour on a grey Sunday evening in Dublin for free.
Monday is pushed away into the background for another few hours. It’s a beautiful thing.
You can find out where the Dublin Jazz Jam Session is next meeting here.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site