The Irish tradition has been strangely resistant to infection by the jazz virus. With a few notable exceptions, no jazz musician has ever really managed to draw together Irish traditional music and the African-American improvisatory tradition in any kind of sustained way.
Cork pianist and composer Cormac McCarthy joins that short list of notable exceptions with this approachable debut release.
The influence of the American mid-west (McCarthy studied composition at Chicago’s De Paul University) is also audible in the young composer’s sweepingly cinematic tunes, and there are distinct echoes of Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, but this creditable debut suggests that a younger generation may be finding their own path to the Irish trad waterfall.
