Bray Jazz Festival Set To Become Major Bank Holiday Week-End Attraction

Visiting artists from both sides of the Atlantic are set to bring a truly international flavour to the second annual Bray Jazz Festival on the May Bank Holiday week-end, May 4th to 6th , an event which is set to headline Co. Wicklow's entertainment calendar. The festival will feature more than a dozen concert performances and shows by top Irish performers and international acts.

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Headline artists will include a New York quartet at the cutting edge of modern jazz, a swinging Latin jazz presentation by a UK based ensemble and an entirely acoustic show by one of Britain's top saxophonists. It is all part of a fine effort to build on the success of its inaugral Millennium year festival which attracted more than 5,000 people.

New Yorker Jim Black's Alas No Axis have been hailed as pioneers of future jazz. Their compositions interweave delicate intricate melodies with scorching instrumentation. Their sound, created with the aid of traditional jazz instrumentation and G3 Powerbook computers, veers between ephermal melody and industrial tinged noise-scapes.