Additional main concerts have been added to October’s Cork Jazz Festival including an appearance by the hot avant trio of Paul G. Smyth, John Edwards (Decoy, Mulatu), and Mark Sanders at the Triskel Christchurch venue. Also new are Bilal, Ronan Guilfoyle's Quintet, Berklee Global Jazz Institute, Omen 111, Garrison Fewell, Butter, and Jaime Nanci and the Blueboys.
On the Music Xtra trail highlights include James Taylor Quartet, Pete Molinari, and Devon Sproule/Mike O’Neil, while the huge Guinness Music Trail has a vibrant mix of mostly free-entry music in venues dotted across the city.
Singer Lee Gibson leads the festival’s Jazz Choir in the Jazz Bar of the Everyman, with choral workshops for amateur singers building to performances and there are four street bands for Cork this year: the New York Brass Band from Yorkshire, Beat n Blow from Berlin, Blå Mandag Jazz Band from Copenhagen, and the A470s Big Band from Wales.
Already announced for the festival, which runs from 25-28 October, are headliners Nile Rodgers and Chic, the Mingus Big Band, Billy Cobham’s Spectrum 40, Portico Quartet, Snarky Puppy, and saxophone legend Courtney Pine in a double bill with highly rated US singer René Marie on opening night at the Everyman Palace theatre. René's new album I Wanna Be Evil (With Love to Eartha Kitt) is released ahead of Cork on 23 September.
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 in the summer. 
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.
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. Details of the fringe will be announced soon.
More at www.guinnessjazzfestival.com
Beat n Blow pictured top and René Marie above right