A summer lunchtime free open-air concert series in Dublin City Council’s Civic Offices Amphitheatre.
What is Wood Quay Summer Sessions?
A free to attend open-air series of music concerts in Dublin City Council’s Civic Offices Amphitheatre. Collaborating with our colleagues, First Music Contact, Music Network and the Contemporary Music Centre, IMC regularly programmes jazz acts as part of this successful summer lunchtime free concert series, supported by Dublin City Council. While Wood Quay Summer Sessions unfortunately cannot take place in 2022, we hope it will return in the future.
Why are we doing it?
Wood Quay Summer Sessions allows us to present high quality music to new audiences and being part of a monthly series highlights each genre equally. It is great to collaborate with peers in the wider music scene, and, most importantly, this is a fundamental opportunity to attract new audiences to this music, exposing the general public to quality jazz performances by Irish artists.
What it means for you
If you are chosen to perform at the Wood Quay Summer Sessions, it is a chance to play to new audiences, with a minimum performance guarantee of €120 - €150 per musician (depending on ensemble size), and participate in a radio quality 'outside broadcast' (OB) from Near FM. It also exposes your music to audiences as part of a larger programme of activities, with radio, interview and associated PR opportunities surrounding the events. The series is very active across social media; Facebook and Twitter.
How to get involved
If you are interested in performing in this space in the future, or have suggestions on other public spaces to perform that we could discuss with Dublin City Council please drop us a line to hello[at]improvisedmusic[dot]ie with WQSS in the subject line.
What we are unable to do
We cannot create a performance opportunity for every artist who expresses interest. It is 2 slots on a specific date, which will be programmed in line with our artistic strategy and policies for equality.
Our goals
We believe we will have been successful regarding any edition of Wood Quay Summer Sessions if we have delivered 2 quality Irish improvised music performances as part of the Wood Quay Summer Sessions and showcased Irish jazz as an innovative, exciting and progressive music to be enjoyed by audiences new and old.
Wood Quay Summer Sessions returned in July 2020 for a series of online lunchtime concerts broadcast from Dublin City Council's beautiful Wood Quay Venue.
Now in its sixth year, this ever-popular outdoor series moved online for 2020, with four unique online concerts streaming from 1pm on Thursdays throughout July on the Wood Quay Summer Sessions Facebook page.
The first week, presented by Improvised Music Company, featured mesmerising contemporary jazz from Chris Engel's BigSpoon.
In addition to the video performances from the four acts, Dublin's Near FM broadcasted the concerts each Thursday at 6pm, alongside behind-the-scenes chats with the artists.