Louis Stewart - Joyce Notes

Louis Stewart - Joyce Notes

Words: Billy O’Hanluain

Livia Records’s latest trawl into the Louis Stewart archive unearths, arguably, its most intriguing, rediscovered treasure to date. “Joycenotes” captures a performance at the 1982 edition of the Cork Jazz festival, of Louis Stewart’s only fully formed suite of his own compositions that were inspired by episodes from Joyce’s “Ulysses”. In many ways the suite is reminiscent of the Beat Generation recordings of Jack Kerouac reading his work with live jazz accompaniment, and Stweart’s work here can be seen as valuable contribution to the tradition of fusing jazz with literature and in the process of doing so, Joyce’s words are free to sing and swing as never before, recast as they are here as not just words from a seminal text but also a rhythmic patterns in themselves that interplay brilliantly in both the composed and improvised passages of the ensemble playing.

Eamon Morrisey, a master of multiple accents and the cadences and rhythms of each of them, segues from one character to the next with the ease of an accomplished jazz soloist, his melodic and harmonic material are not musical notes but words, and he makes them dazzle and ricochet across the sound stage as they are liberated from the page to merge with the musical ether. Louis gathered an ensemble of national and international players to perform his suite, Brian Dunning, flute, and a 22-year-old Richie Buckley are both especially impressive.

Here’s an album that rewards deep listening, and total immersion as though you were at the concert itself.

https://liviarecords.bandcamp.com/album/louis-stewart-joyce-notes