Stella Bass: Guinness Cork Jazz Festival 2024

Fresh from sold-out jazz concerts around Ireland, Stella Bass is thrilled to showcase her 2024 album, Look for the Silver Lining, a collaboration with the Johnny Taylor Trio, featuring a heady mix of delightful swing, intimate ballads, intoxicating Latin grooves, and some of her original songs.

Faced with a pandemic-induced empty diary, Bass dived into songwriting. Bingeing (belatedly!) on Downton Abbey during a nasty ‘flu, her ears pricked up at the sound of a rather obscure Jerome Kern song in one key scene: she knew immediately it would be perfect as the album’s name and theme.

Two of her own songs fit the album’s vision perfectly and, having spent time in musical theatre where the art of storytelling is everything, she carefully selected eight standards, each telling its own tale and with a special nod to those strange times.

Stella Bass – vocals
Johnny Taylor – piano
Barry Donohue – double bass
Dominic Mullan – drums

“…it would be hard to pick out Bass’ originals from those by Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin et al. She should not wait for the next pandemic before reaching for pen and blank paper.”  All About Jazz (UK)

“Every now and again an album appears as if from nowhere that immediately you get, and more importantly gets you.” Jazz Views (UK)

“A great sense of clarity in her enunciation and a relaxed sense of timing.” – Jazz Weekly (USA)