IMC's Blind Date Jazz Episode 6: Meilana Gillard & Chris Guilfoyle

Welcome to the sixth Blind Date Jazz episode of IMC’s Creative About Music Podcast. For this musical blind date, we paired up guitarist Chris Guilfoyle with tenor saxophonist Meilana Gillard.

Each episode in Blind Date Jazz is a new encounter between 2 artists , playing ‘blind’ with no knowledge who the other person is, no advance preparation or even an indication of instrumentation. Halfway through we drop the curtain and they suddenly see who their new improvising partner is - can you hear a change in the music? 

Meilana Gillard is a saxophonist and composer based in Northern Ireland since 2012.  She has two albums under her name (Day One ’09, Dream Within A Dream ’17), both of which received critical acclaim. Currently, she is one third of Ireland’s own RBG Trio featuring Dave Redmond and Kevin Brady. They released their first single ‘Black Hole Sun’ in October 2020 and are recording a full-length album in 2021. Born in London, Meilana grew up in Ohio and studied music in New York city, where she had the chance to perform with several of her heroes. Since moving to Northern Ireland, she has made a great impact on the Irish jazz scene and is in demand as a player. Often praised for her big sound and story-telling improvisations, memorable melodic compositions and lyricism, she remains a perpetual student. 

Find more of her work at her website www.meilanaontenor.com

Chris Guilfoyle is an Irish guitarist, composer, bandleader, and educator who tours regularly around Ireland and abroad including the UK, The Netherlands, Belgium and France. Since 2011, Chris has been a member of faculty on Newpark Music Centre’s BA in Jazz Performance program, and has since become a Jazz Lecturer at Dublin City University where he teaches guitar and ensemble studies. Chris leads his own group Umbra, a critically acclaimed quintet featuring some of the most promising musicians in Ireland. Umbra have released two records in the last two years and have toured extensively in Ireland and Europe. In his relatively short career, Chris has played with some of the biggest names in jazz including Dave Liebman, Jim Black, Tom Rainey, Theo Bleckmann, Nils Wogram, Ralph Peterson, John O’Gallagher, and David Binney. He also performs with Ronan Guilfoyle, Conor Guilfoyle, Sean Carpio and Michael Buckley, some of the most highly regarded musicians on the Irish jazz scene.
Find more of Chris' work at his website chrisguilfoyle.com or follow Umbra on Twitter or Facebook.

Blind Date Jazz is an exploration in listening, intuition, skill and spontaneity, all unique hallmarks of the improvising artist.

You can watch this Blind Date Jazz in full video form on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEhYAFH6KtE

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Improvised Music Company is an Arts Council funded promoter and resource organisation www.improvisedmusic.ie

Thanks to Justin Carroll's Togetherness for our podcast theme https://justincarroll.bandcamp.com/album/togetherness