When you take a jazz musician with an interest in Celtic music, and a Celtic musician with a passion for jazz and mix them, you end up with the Celtic Jazz Collective. The alchemical mixture of musical genres was accomplished by jazz drummer, Lewis Nash, and Irish guitarist, David O'Rourke.

O'Rourke grew up in a Dublin home where jazz was always on the radio and turntable. When he moved to New York, O'Rourke often played with jazz luminaries, such as Etta Jones, Jack McDuff, Cedar Walton, and Bob Cranshaw, to name a few. In this rarefied company, O'Rourke honed his improvisational skills.

Then a fortuitous meeting with jazz drum master Lewis Nash, took place. Nash was in Ireland playing with the Tommy Flanagan Trio, when O'Rourke joined them. It turned out that the American jazz drummer was very interested in the Celtic music that he heard O'Rourke perform. Nash was especially interested in Irish music from prior centuries.

This caught the interest of Gael Linn, a foundation concerned with preserving Celtic culture. O'Rourke and Nash were awarded a grant to produce both a CD and a documentary to further this cause. Thus was the Celtic Jazz Collective born. Its vehicle would become its 2002 CD release, Celtic Jazz Collective: IsLinn (A Vision).

To bring the traditional music of Ireland together with jazz to create something new, the two musicians sought out some of the top names in Irish music and jazz to contribute to the project. Chief among these is the man who many think is the finest uillean pipe player in the world: Paddy Keenan. Already known for his improvisational skills on the traditional Irish pipes, Keenan was a perfect choice.

Violin virtuoso Regina Carter agreed to join the group, along with a host of fine Irish players, including Martin Reilly, on accordion; Marie Reilly and Fiona Doherty on fiddles; Niall Vallely, on concertina; Ronan Guilfoyle, on bass; and Fintan O'Neill on piano. From the jazz world, came Nash's associates, Peter Washington on bass, and Steve Kroon on percussion.

With these musicians, O'Rourke and Nash have staged a musical revolution. While the tunes, from jigs and reels to ballads, owe their lives to the Celtic tradition from which they sprang, their treatment is based on the complex rhythms and harmonies of jazz. In true synergistic fashion, something greater has been created than the sum of the parts that went into the music.

It has been pointed out that other composers from Chopin to Miles Davis and John Coltrane have engaged in this cross cultural approach to modalities. It worked for those musical geniuses, and it works here.

Witness the beauty of The Belfast Hornpipe, with its Caribbean rhythm section, or the Bossa Nova score on Nocturne in B-Flat Major by John Field. There is rollicking good music on tracks such as The Maid Behind the Bar, that contains both jazz and Celtic influences. The sophisticated tonalities of gospel music were also an influence, and can be heard on pieces such as The Morning Star. From start to finish, the CD is stunning. One can only hope that this will only be the first of many works by the Celtic Jazz Collective. ~ Rose of Sharon Witmer, Rovi