READY FOR FREDDIE:

One of the most anticipated names to appear this summer for the first time on the faculty and in performance at Ireland's top jazz festival and summer school held in spiritual Sligo annually is the appearance of the swinging hard bop and AfroCuban attuned trumpeter and flugelhorn player, out of Teaneck, New Jersey - Freddie Hendrix.

We asked Eddie Lee, the No Crows bassist and artistic director of the festival & summer school, how Eddie had heard word of Freddie's prowess that then prompted him to invite him into the west this summer for the jazz days gathering come July down by the Garavogue.

''I heard of Freddie,'' Eddie explains, ''from work he did with Rufus Reid actually, and then when we booked Elio Villafranca as artist in residence (I saw Elio in Lincoln Center last spring where he premiered a specially commissioned suite 'Tres Aguas' for Jazz at Lincoln Center) - Elio said he’d like to have sympathetic musicians around him so Freddie was one of those along with Alejandro [Aviles], sax, Dion [Parson] drums [readers may recall Dion was on Samuel Blaser's tremendous Don Drummond skazz tribute Routes last year] and Manel [Fortià] bass. Basically we have a band in residence!''

FLASHBACK TO 2014 AND CARIBBEAN TINGE:

Elio and the Jass Syncopators' Caribbean Tinge (Motéma) proved a fairly lively affair recorded in 2011 and 2012 at Dizzy’s in Jazz at Lincoln Center. The Cuban pianist drew on early-jazz inspirations including the “Spanish tinge” of Jelly Roll Morton, Ellington (note the “jass” in the band name) and Caribbean styles, not sounding like a period piece at all. All the tunes and arrangements are the pianist’s, Villafranca’s band including alternating bassists Carlos Henriquez and Gregg August, and again alternating drummers Willie Jones III and Lewis Nash. The album also bristles with bustling horn players, including trumpeters Sean Jones and Terell Stafford, and saxophonists Greg Tardy and Vincent Herring, plus plenty of congas and bongos adding to the percussive sound. Ultimately even though there is plenty of heat to it it is quite a polite and nuanced presentation. Tunes take inspiration variously from Congo Square, Paris, and even Afro-Puerto Rican rhythms. ‘Mambo Vivo’ is dedicated to the father of mambo,

Freddie Hendrix, photo: via Adams. Click for more faculty news on Sligo 24. Freddie Hendrix listening above from inside the Christian McBride Big Band on The Good Feeling (2011), We Are the Jazz Brigade (2022), Standing by the Crossroads (2023) and most recently on fine crooner John Dokes' bouncing Our Day (2024) reviewed on marlbank