[ARCHIVE] Sankhara April 6
Dolan’s Upstairs April 6th, Admission €10
Doors 8.30, Gig 9.15
‘Sankhara’ is a newly formed duo featuring Izumi Kimura on piano and Joe O’ Callaghan on guitar,playing new music written by Joe. With influences from contemporary classical to jazz and rock music,this duo are an exciting addition to the Irish creative music scene.
Izumi Kimura
Heroic levels of technical fearlessness, stamina and strength – she also created breathing, slow-burn climax – with a more reflective, often intimate style of playing’.
‘Natural kind of musicianship that never strives too much’.
‘Her easy authority made each piece seem to come across as it should – persuasively’.
‘Pristine clarity’
‘Mesmerizing’
Irish Times / Sunday Business Post
“Limerick’s Joe O’Callaghan is a genuine force in Irish jazz guitar, with extended tasteful lines, contemporary chord shapes and an instinct for rocking out when the need arises.”
Improvised Music Company
Joe O’Callaghan has performed with many leading Irish and international jazz musicians including Len McCarthy, Louis Stewart, Ronan Guilfoyle, Sean Carpio, Richie Buckley, Michael Buckley, CSL Parker, Honor Heffernan, Jim Doherty, Maria Tecce, Dorothy Murphy, Mike Neilsen, Tommy Halferty, Brian Dunning, Hugh Buckley, Nick Roth, Ivan Paduart, Martin Speake, Linley Hamilton, Julian Arguelles, Dave Liebman, Tom Rainey, Nils Wogram, John Rocco, Tanya Kalmanovitch, Paul Williamson, Vincent Courtois.
Joe was a member of Ronan Guilfoyle’s bands Microclimate and Metier and played in two of his major works; “Simulacrum” at the Mermaid Theatre in Bray and “Terms and conditions apply” at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin. In August 2007,he played in Dublin with Ronan to celebrate the 60th birthday of Dave Liebman,on a piece titled “Hand,Head,Heart”, with a quintet featuring Dave Liebman. He has also played with Fuzzy Logic Ensemble,a band led by Dylan Rynhart and played on their album `Mouthpiece`. Currently, he has his own acoustic quartet `Freeplay` and has just formed a new trio with Derek Whyte (bass) and Ben Wanders(drums).
Joe is mostly self-taught on guitar. He attended improvisation classes and master classes at Newpark Music School,Blackrock ,Dublin where his teachers included Ronan Guilfoyle, Tommy Halferty, Mike McMullen, Dave Liebman, Richie Bierach, Simon Nabatov, Sonny Fortune and Dave Holland. He also works as a tutor for the Limerick Jazz Workshop which teaches adults and teenagers the fundamentals of jazz and regularly holds student concerts in the Limerick area.
Izumi talks about her musical background: “As a contemporary pianist, I am attracted to the things that live in the cracks between composed and improvised music. Between abstract and concrete, variations of the forms the Nature takes, our roles, cultures, languages, attitudes, things unknown, things in between, invisibles and inaudibles, all these things are vibrations I try to listen, through the act of playing the piano.
I was born in Yokohama, Japan, and have been playing the piano since I was little and the whole time I spent in Japan, which was up to 1995. As soon as I graduated from Toho University of Music in Tokyo I moved to Ireland. It took a long time and some turbulence of life before my music and life started to grow together. Very slowly, life and music started becoming intertwined with each other – timing and balance.
I have been lucky to work with lots of great musicians and wonderful people from both classical and jazz/improvised music fields. I have appeared on RTE Lyric FM, RTE 1, Dublin City FM and RTE 2 television. Musicians and ensembles I worked with include RTECO, Crash Ensemble, Ergodos, Music 21, Michael d’Arcy, Bill Dowdall, Kenneth Edge, Ben Dwyer, Cora Venus Lunny and many more from the world of classical music, and Ronan Guilfoyle, Tommy Halferty, Michael Buckley, Benoît Delbecq, Stéphane Payen, Sarah Buechi and many more from the world of jazz/improvised music. The festivals I enjoyed performing in Ireland and abroad include RTE Living Music Festival, Boyle Arts Festival, Dublin Dance Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, Bray Jazz Festival, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Ghent Street Festival of New Music in Belgium, Music 21’s ‘Brazil Now’, ‘Artes Da Irlanda’ in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and Creative Connexions in Sitges, Spain, and more.”
