Tickets have gone on sale for the first Irish appearance of Jeff Ballard’s new band Fairgrounds who are to play a Dublin gig in March.

Drummer Ballard is best known for his long time membership of Brad Mehldau’s trio appearing on such albums as Where Do You Start, Ode, Highway Rider, Brad Mehldau Trio Live and Day is Done as well as his tenure in the co-operative ECM-signed band Fly with Mark Turner and Larry Grenadier.

 

Last year having signed under his own name to Sony’s jazz label OKeh the Californian released Time’s Tales joined on the album by Beninese jazz guitar star Lionel Loueke and Puerto Rican saxophone icon Miguel Zenón. Time’s Tales featured material as contrasting as an adaptation of Bartók and a take on the Queens of the Stone Age’s ‘Hangin’ Tree.’ 

 

In Fairgrounds Ballard is joined once more by Loueke plus bassist Reid Anderson of The Bad Plus, here in his Fairgrounds guise as an electronicist, and by pianist Kevin Hays. (Stephen Graham)