Music Articles | Marlbank Jazz Blog

A new wave of musicians including Matt Benson are making their mark in Ireland and beyond. But why doesn’t the media care enough to enter in? The upshot is the wider public remains in the dark when culture editors don’t allot sufficient space to inform, educate and inspire readers to individually engage

As an Irish jazz blogger I am always keen to support the local scene.

The Irish jazz scene is very different to the UK equivalent. Firstly, and I mean both emanating from the north and the south together, it is a lot smaller. There are fewer jazz releases. But there is an active festival scene. For instance in places like Cork, Bray, Derry, Sligo, Limerick and Belfast. There is a nightly club in Bert’s in Belfast and a couple of regular weekly nights including a suburban place in the east of the city called Scott’s and in Dublin there are places like Arthur’s. In rural County Down, Magy’s Farm which puts on gigs sporadically, is superb.

But you can count on the fingers of two hands the number of venues that specialise in jazz. That’s in an all Ireland population of about 7.2m. Contrast that with smaller populations in Scandinavian countries where there is more activity and more support from arts bodies and a more clued up media. The public need to know!

Jazz gets zero proper newspaper media coverage. None of the top papers gave jazz a weekly review column slot even a tiny regulat review among the pop releases.

Would it hurt to squeeze in even a token twice weekly mention just as a boost and to make up for past failures in coverage to begin with anyway?

The Irish Times coverage has got worse since Cormac Larkin was the critic – he stopped a few years ago – it just doesn’t care enough to give the music the dignity or commensurate coverage that recognises the status of jazz as a historic global art form within music. It’s laughable when pages are devoted instead to pop acts who will often be forgotten about the moment their labels forget to promote their wares.

The Irish Times has a habit of doing features on visiting artists but neglecting homegrown artists who are the ones who make the scene work.

The Irish Independent isn’t much better and hasn’t done much since Grainne Farren‘s day. Belfast’s main newspaper its sister paper the Belfast Telegraph doesn’t review gigs either or be supportive apart from once in a blue moon when an article somehow against the odds appears.

That’s a pity because there is quite a lot of jazz going on in Belfast including the advent of David Lyttle’s new Dock Street Jazz Club adding to existing activity. Maybe they’ll do something occasionally when the Brilliant Corners festival is on but a swallow doesn’t make a summer. Radio Ulster used to have 2 weekly jazz programmes. Now it has none.

The only blog out there apart from marlbank is the estimable Jazz Ireland site run by Red Keane. It mainly does listings and some videos.

We need more blogs. Radio shows. Podcasters, YouTubers. It’s a shame that specialist journalists like Red and myself aren’t used a bit more to help spread the word. There must be others out there like us who can also contribute great jazz journalism to feed into the ecosystem. Arts journalism tends to focus on film, TV and theatre and where music is concerned niche musics like jazz are forgotten about in the race to devote lots of pages to pop.

People are in the dark about the local scene.

Best Irish jazz in 2025: most comprehensive, broad ranging list

In the absence of anything new to review: have a look at last year’s list of top Irish releases.

Let’s hope something new comes along soon.

There are some great jazz musicians out there and if unfamiliar with the scene I’d list the top ones as Christine Tobin, Steve ‘Dakiz’ Davis, Dave Redmond, Kevin Brady, Darren Beckett, Matthew Jacobson, Ronan Guilfoyle, Linley Hamilton, Eddie Lee, Tommy Halferty, Neil O’Loughlin, Michael Buckley, Nils Kavanagh, Richie Buckley, Hugh Buckley, Dana Masters, Scott Flanigan, Katharine Timoney, Cian Boylan, Matt Benson, Neil Burns, Jack Kelly, Kyron Bourke, Izumi Kimura, Barry O’Donoghue, David Lyttle, Honor Heffernan and many more. The next festival coming up is in Kildare. Read about it below.