My mum is a classical pianist and music teacher. She taught me from the get-go, and while I took to the piano naturally enough to finish my Grade 8 by the time I was 15, I absolutely hated practising. Standard drilling bored me. Instead, I’d take an eight-bar phrase from whatever piece I was supposed to be learning, abandon the sheet music, and just start developing it into something else.
I didn’t even really listen to music properly until I was about 13 or 14. My entry point wasn’t jazz or classical masters; it was film composers like Thomas Newman and Hans Zimmer.
Studying those massive, atmospheric scores in school was the first time music felt truly alive to me.
When I moved to Bangor Grammar at 15, the Head of Music, Paul O’Reilly, handed me a saxophone and immediately integrated me into the school jazz band. I went on to do my Grade 8 on tenor sax, and while I loved the arrangements and the freedom of learning how to improvise, I still hadn’t found that one thing that connects your soul to the keys.
He played me ‘Maiden Voyage / Everything In Its Right Place’ – a brilliant, genre-bending mashup of a Radiohead tune and a classic Herbie Hancock standard. The harmony, the rhythmic interplay – wow. I was blown away. I took that record home and couldn’t stop listening to it. I had absolutely no idea how those musicians were doing what they were doing, but it opened a doorway. It led me down a rabbit hole into hip-hop and R&B, genres I didn’t even realise were so heavily saturated with jazz harmony. I just fell in love with the chords.
The Real Education
By the time university rolled around, I was so obsessed that I chose to study music at Queen’s. Academically, it wasn’t the right fit for my jazz interests, but it brought something much better into my life: meeting the incredible pianist Scott Flanigan, who became my mentor.
I looked at him completely blankly. “What do you mean ‘play’? There’s no music on the page. Where is it coming from?”
From that exact moment, I realised jazz isn’t played by the mind, it moves through your body and your soul. I was hooked.
Through Scott’s guidance and cutting my teeth playing a vast array of live gigs, I discovered my own lane. I might be mostly self-taught, and maybe I’m still chasing the title of a true “jazz pianist,” but one thing is for sure: when you hear me play, it is from the heart. It’s real, it’s alive, and I thank God for it. Everything I do is rooted in my deep Christian faith, and I’ve always felt that the act of pure improvisation goes hand-in-hand with my Creator. He gave me this gift, and playing is how I worship.
A Shock to the System
The story of how this debut EP, Before Dusk and Dawn, actually came to be is a bit of a whirlwind. To be blunt: it was a beautifully rushed process.
Last year, I was playing a gig with my band at The Courthouse in Bangor. Dr. Linley Hamilton MBE happened to be in the audience. He came up afterward, told us we were sounding great, and asked me to give him a shout the next day for a chat. I had no clue what it was about.
I panicked. “What? No, don’t be silly. I’ve never wanted to do that. I don’t write tunes, I’m not an ‘artist.’ No way.”
Linley didn’t care about my imposter syndrome. He went ahead and booked the studio for two months later, and suddenly, that was that. Zak Irvine, the artist. It was a dream I’d never even permitted myself to have because I didn’t think it was possible.
I had to get to work fast – select a band of the finest young musicians around, and actually write the music.
I locked myself at the piano and thankfully, the ideas came. ‘Haze’ and ‘Ember’ were born out of those sessions, and I feel they are the strongest compositions I’ve ever written.
‘No.3’ is a snapshot of pure spontaneity, a live jam we captured right there on the tracking day.
Finally, ‘In Motion’ was a piece I originally wrote for my final recital at Queen’s, refashioned for the band.
The artwork for the EP features a photograph of a sunrise. I’ve always wanted to capture music through the lens of nature and God’s creation; for me, music and the natural world go completely hand-in-hand.
That quick turnaround gave me the ultimate kick up the backside, forcing me to overcome the fear that I wasn’t good enough. Fast forward a few months, and the first single was somehow featured on Jamie Cullum’s BBC Radio 2 show.
I will be forever grateful to Linley for his fierce passion and his desire to push young musicians entirely out of their comfort zones to achieve things they thought were impossible.
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