Innovational musician, arranger, composer and multi-instrumentalist Jolyon Jackson.
Artist Nigel Rolfe performs 'Crawling' for an audience of young people at Scoil Lorcáin Secondary School, Monkstown, County Dublin. The live musical accompaniment for this piece is by the experimental multi-instrumentalist and composer Jolyon Jackson. During this performance, he plays a Yamaha piano, an ARP Odyssey synthesizer, a drum kit and an ocarina.
Playing the ARP Odyssey synthesizer, Jolyon Jackson is joined by guitarist Gerry O'Beirne to perform a version of 'The Princess Royal' composed by Turlough O'Carolan (Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin).
Born in 1948, Jolyon Jackson moved to Dublin in the mid-1960s to attend Trinity College Dublin. With the group Supply, Demand and Curve, he was lauded as one of the most talented musicians in Ireland in the early 1970s.
Jolyon Jackson’s 1980 recording with fiddle player Paddy Glackin ‘Hidden Ground’ on Tara Records, crossed boundaries, fusing Irish traditional and electronic music. In the early 1980s, Jolyon Jackson joined Roger Doyle's Operating Theatre. From his recording studio in Dún Laoghaire, he composed music for theatre and RTÉ Television programmes.
A much sought-after collaborator, Jolyon Jackson contributed to or produced recordings for many Irish artists, including The Chieftains, Scullion and Christy Moore.
Diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in his late 20s, early 30s, Jolyon Jackson died on 18 December 1985. He is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery in southwest London.
'Aisling Gheal' was an Irish language programme devised by producer Tony MacMahon. Translated as ‘A Bright Dream', the programme was designed to be a television 'happening'.
This episode of 'Aisling Gheal' was broadcast on 20 January 1979.
