ENTERTAINMENT: Carole Nelson Trio to play in Westport

CELEBRATED jazz pianist, saxophonist and composer Carole Nelson is bringing her current project, the Carole Nelson Trio, to Westport this Friday, for an intimate gig at the Westport Jazz Club in the Clew Bay Hotel. The performance will see Nelson on piano, accompanied by bassist Cormac O’Brien and drummer Dominic Mullen.
After a debut performance at the ‘TrioTrioTrioPiano Festival’ in Dublin back in 2015, the Carole Nelson Trio recorded their first album ‘One Day in Winter’, which was released in November 2017.
The album, all original compositions by Nelson, follows the course of a winter’s day, inspired by the south County Carlow landscape between the River Barrow and the Blackstairs Mountains, where she currently lives. Reviewed in The Irish Times, it was described as ‘a finely wrought meditation that tapped into the spacious European piano trio tradition of Tord Gustavsen and Marcin Wasilewski’, while Nelson herself was praised as ‘a rare and exceptional talent’ whose ‘glorious free-spirited jazz’ has cemented her stature as ‘one of Ireland’s more original jazz composers’.
The trio’s second album, ‘Arboreal’, came in February 2020, and it features another collection of outstanding compositions.
Nelson has also worked with vocalist Maria Walsh since 1991, playing together as Zrazy. Their debut CD, ‘Give It All Up’, won the 1992 Hot Press/Music Critics Best New Band Award. With their blend of art pop, smooth jazz and cocktail lounge soul and funk, Zrazy has since recorded five albums of critically-acclaimed and award-winning music. Their 1998 album ‘Private Wars’ won an American GLAMA award (Gay and Lesbian American Music Award) for Best Jazz. The duo performed at last year’s Galway and Cork Jazz Festivals and have toured extensively in North America and Europe.
Nelson has also arranged original music for the Dublin choir Gloria, and her composition ‘Beloved’ and other arrangements are now performed by choirs worldwide. Her theatre work includes composition for ‘The Trojan Women’ at the Peacock and Emma Donoghues’s ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ at the Project.

Tickets (€15) for this Friday’s Clew Bay Hotel performance, which starts at 8.30pm, will be available on the door.