Aisling Iris

Aisling joined us back in 2017 to bring us some Irish joy with her stunningly good, soulful and jazzy tones…

Aisling – pronounced Ashling and meaning ‘dream’ or ‘vision’ in Gaelic – was born to a jazz-singing, piano-playing mother from the wilds of rural County Cork. She set off for London in her late teens and soon found herself working at Universal Music…

There she met Tony Swain, Head of A&R at the time and a successful pop producer, having produced hit singles for 1980’s icons like Spandau Ballet, Imagination, Alison Moyet & Michael McDonald. She signed to his production company and together they collaborated on an album’s worth of material together, including ‘Is it Over’ which can be found on Aisling’s self-released E.P. ‘You Took The Sun Away’.

Aisling has worked on several projects in the past few years, including of course, her own solo work. She released her debut album ‘Night Time Moves’ produced by Drew Horley (Ty, Natalie Williams) and co-written with Andrew Mclean (Grace Jones) and Phil Craig which was playlisted on Jazz FM, Mi-Soul, Delite and Solar Radio as well as featured by Jamie Cullum as a BBC Introducing Artist on his Radio 2 show.

There’s also the Jazz Quartet Neon Villages whose highlights include supporting Jazz legend Marcus Miller on his Afrodeezia tour, along with performances at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival and the St. Ives Jazz Club. Her third project is Monk, The Final Frontier Quintet, a vocal tribute to the music of Thelonious Monk which received rave reviews at the Birmingham Jazz Festival, The 606 Club & The Crypt Jazz Club.

Her eclectic talents have seen her touring as support to Roots Manuva, working with such artists as Phil Asher, Ian Friday and Domu, supporting UK legends Omar, the late Lynden David Hall & Eska Mtungwazi. Aisling has also co-written for artists including W-inds (a Japanese boy band) and Sony artist Timothy James. In 2017 Aisling met bass player & Jazzwise editor Mike Flynn at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival and the group Alchemical was formed.

Since then they’ve collaborated on a number of tracks together, bringing on board talented players to feature including guitarist Rob Luft, saxophonist Phil Meadows, pianist Samuel Crowe and drummer Andrew McLean. In 2018, Aisling hosted her own show ‘Eclectic Vanguard’ on Delite Radio, recordings of which can be heard on her Mixcloud page.

We welcome her to our small but perfect Hall Of Fame and hope she’ll be back to Summer Soulstice some time again soon.