Dublin-based Livia Records celebrates the release of legendary guitarist Louis Stewart’s Joyce Notes with a live performance of the album featuring leading Irish drummer Conor Guilfoyle’s septet and actor Barry McGovern at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin on Thursday September 3.
Commissioned for Cork Jazz Festival in 1982, Joyce Notes is a six-part suite based on scenes from James Joyce’s groundbreaking novel, Ulysses. It was premiered by Stewart, with an all-star Irish-American octet and narration by Irish character actor Eamon Morrissey, but was only performed twice more, once in Oslo with a local band and Norwegian text, and once in Dublin in 1993.
The original performance was filmed for television and Dermot Rogers,
the radio presenter who has reactivated Livia Records, had the recording
remastered and released it as part of the series of Louis Stewart albums he
began reissuing in 2022.
Despite Stewart, who died in 2016, being regarded more for his
interpretational and soloing skills than his composing talents during his
career, the music he produced for Joyce Notes has been praised internationally.
Jazzwise magazine gave the album four stars. The Irish Times enthused:
“It’s as if Louis Stewart and James Joyce were kindred spirits”. And Jazz
Journal described Joyce Notes as “a bold, adventurous work that’s fully the
equal of Stan Tracey’s Under Milk Wood as an example of jazz meets modern
literature”.
For this latest performance, which is presented in association with The
James Joyce Centre, Dublin, Conor Guilfoyle, who studied at New York’s Drummers
Collective, will lead the band and Barry McGovern, an actor with extensive
experience of Joyce’s works, will deliver the scenes from Ulysses.
“It’s been really rewarding to see the positive response to Joyce Notes the album,” says Dermot Rogers. “The music stands up really well more than forty years since its conception and I’m looking forward to hearing the cast of 2026 bringing the Joyce Notes experience to life.”
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