Writing & Research

Most of my research has been about jazz in Ireland, who played it, where, and what it meant to the people involved, from the first dance bands of 1919 to the Dublin scene today.

Articles

• Ireland, jazz, Dublin Zoo, Bloody Sunday and the Athlone Musical Society

  What may have been the first jazz performance in Ireland, at a ball in 1919, and the row over “immoral jazz” that followed. From my PhD research, written for this site in 2017.

• Rum: Negotiating Interaction through Composition

  AIC New Music Journal, 2019. How a composition can work as a focal point for a jazz group’s decisions, using Greg Felton’s Rum. Inspired by Vijay Iyer’s rhythmic experiments and Ingrid Monson’s writing, it describes our trio’s trick of moving between a clave in 7/4 and one in 5/4 that sound almost the same. There’s also a performance of Rum.

• These Off-beat “Crazy Kids and Gals”: Jazz in Ireland, 1918 to 1960

  Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, 2019.

PhD

• The Creation of Meaning and Identity in the Dublin Jazz Scene, Past and Present

  An ethnographic and archival study of jazz in Dublin. The thesis is free to download.

Organising

• Documenting Jazz

  The international conference I founded at TU Dublin in 2019, which has since moved around the UK.

• Jazz Studies Reading Group

  A monthly reading group for postgraduate and early-career researchers that Kevin Higgins and I ran from 2017 to 2019, with the full reading list.

• Irish Jazz and Dance Band Workshop

  A Heritage Week afternoon at DCU Library in August 2019, where people brought photos, ticket stubs and memories of Irish jazz and dance bands to be recorded.

Talks and broadcasts

• “Internationally-famous Lady Saxophonist”: Documenting the Life of Irish Musician Josephine “Zandra” Mitchell. Documenting Jazz, Edinburgh (online), 2021
• Women in Early Irish Jazz: Researching the Life of Saxophonist Josephine “Zandra” Mitchell (1903 to 1995). SMI/ICTM Plenary Conference, Trinity College Dublin (online), 2021
• Television interview, COSC, “Down with Jazz”, RTÉ One, 2020
• “All Ireland Danced, All the Time”: The Role of Dance Bands in Irish Jazz. Rhythm Changes, Graz, 2019
• Finding Jazz in Ireland. Documenting Jazz, TU Dublin, 2019
• “Harlem comes to Ballyjamesduff”: The Changing Reception of Jazz in Ireland post 1940. SMI Plenary Conference, Cork, 2018
• Interview on jazz in Ireland, The Lyric Concert, Lyric FM, 2018
• From Jazz Performance to Research: Contextualising the New Jazz Studies. DIT Conservatory, 2017
• Panel convenor, Down with Jazz: Power and Agency in Localised Musicking. SMI Plenary Conference, Queen’s University Belfast, 2017
• Interview on improvisation, The Lyric Concert, Lyric FM, 2017
• Spatiality and Performance in the Dublin Jazz Scene. Sounding out the Space, DIT, 2017
• Re/sounding Jazz: Contestation for Ownership of Jazz within the Dublin Jazz Scene. Rhythm Changes, Amsterdam, 2017
• Down with Jazz: The Construction of a National Jazz Identity. Music, Festivals, Heritage, Siena Jazz Archive, 2017
• Trouble in Utopia: Contestation and Negotiation in the Dublin Jazz Scene. Jazz Utopia, Birmingham City University, 2016
• Interview, John Coltrane: A Jazz Pioneer, Talking History, Lyric FM, 2015
• Scene but Not Heard: The Silent Irish Jazz History. SMI Plenary Conference, Cork, 2015
• Scene and Un-scene. Jazz Beyond Borders, Amsterdam, 2014
• Rethinking Jazz Performance as a Research Method. Rhythm Changes, Salford, 2013

Editing

• Book review editor, Jazz Perspectives
• Co-editor, The Musicology Review (UCD), 2013, and a review of Travis A. Jackson’s Blowin’ the Blues Away in the same journal

Other writing

• Getting productive with Scrivener and Zotero (2021): citing sources in Scrivener in a few keystrokes with Alfred and ZotHero.