Courtney Pine above will open the Cork Jazz Festival
on 25 October in a double bill with singer René Marie 

Nile Rodgers and Chic, the Mingus Big Band, Billy Cobham’s Spectrum 40, Portico Quartet, Snarky Puppy, Mos Def, and saxophone legend Courtney Pine are to play the Guinness Cork jazz festival this year, the festival’s artistic director Jack McGouran has confirmed. Londoner Pine whose album House of Legends won Jazzwise magazine's album of the year accolade last year will perform in a double bill with highly rated US singer René Marie on opening night at the Everyman Palace theatre. At the Opera House there’s a crossover strand with standing-only concerts featuring Danish indie rock band Efterklang, rapper Mos Def, the all-conquering Chic, and retro rockers Primal Scream who supported the Stones at Glastonbury last month. Elsewhere the Triskel Christchurch venue will host “nu jazz” Norwegian keyboards star Bugge Wesseltoft; hard hitting Spanish hard-bop alto saxophonist Perico Sambeat; Argentine bandoneónist ECM artist Dino Saluzzi; the acclaimed harpist Edmar Castañeda; and Irish jazz vocals star Melanie O’Reilly. The venue will also mount a late night “Box Set” series featuring fresh new talent from the new Irish and international jazz scene. At the lively festival club in the Gresham Metropole hotel on MacCurtain Street, where the festival began in 1978, there will be four stages this year, while the Cork Jazz Camp, the educational strand of the festival, will get underway at Cork School of Music on the opening day with educators many drawn from top US jazz college Berklee leading free entry workshops and masterclasses. The Guinness Music Trail at the festival, which runs from 25-28 October, also incorporates mostly free-entry gigs at some 60 venues in the city, its outskirts and beyond including events in Kinsale, and the fringe will again include street music and marching bands from abroad. The full line up will be announced in mid-August at www.guinnessjazzfestival.com