PRESS RELEASE – For Immediate Release - 13 May 2019
Hawk’s Well Celebrates Sligo’s Mr. Bass Man Eddie Lee
The Hawk’s Well Theatre is delighted to present a very special concert on Saturday 22nd of November to honour and celebrate the immense musical talent of Sligo’s musical hero Eddie Lee.
An extraordinary talent, this multi-instrumentalist holds a very dear place in the hearts of so many. He will be joined by musical friends from far and near on the night including NoCrows, Those Nervous Animals, Anything Goes, Joe Hunt, David Little/Bryan Priestly, Mike Nielsen/Ciaran Wilde and Cathal Roche, Oleg Ponomarev & Fintan Gilligan, Rumbatism, Niamh Crowley, Austin McManus, Kieran Quinn, Eoin Troy and Seamie McGowan, Simon Hunt and Sinéad Conway to celebrate his enormous contribution to music.
One of the musical stalwarts of Sligo, bassist Eddie Lee is a member of locally-based groups NoCrows, Anything Goes and The Odd Couple. With a long career in music Eddie has performed with many well-known Irish and international artists including A Woman's Heart, Maura O'Connell, Frances Black, Dolores Keane, Stocktons Wing, The Pale, Kieran Goss, Eddi Reader, Brian Kennedy, Ennio Morricone, Kenny Werner, Bill Whelan and Enya.
Eddie has also almost single-handedly developed one of Ireland's biggest and most popular specialist music festivals; Sligo Jazz Project - the biggest jazz education event ever held in Ireland, which has an International Summer School and Jazz Festival. With a faculty of 10 and 100 student participants from 14 countries, SJP’s annual summer school has a growing reputation as one of Europe’s finest jazz education events. Eddie is the Director and administrator of Sligo Jazz Project.
Eddie has been at the forefront of music education in Sligo for the past 10 years, both as director of Sligo Jazz Project and Sligo School of Rock/Sligo Contemporary Music School. Eddie has achieved the highest Rockschool Grades in bass performance and has studied jazz with Mike Nielsen in Chatham Row (now DIT) Dublin. He was awarded an Arts Council Bursary in 2006 to study jazz at the renowned Global Music Foundation’s Tuscany Summer School and Jazz Seminar in Certaldo, Italy. Through his work with Sligo Jazz Project, he has also studied with international jazz bassists and educators John Goldsby, Michael Manring, Rufus Reid and Eric Revis (USA) as well as Arnie Somogyi (UK) and Philip Donkin (UK).
An electric bassist since the age of 17, Eddie studied double bass during mid 1990’s. He studied jazz theory with Mike Nielsen in Dublin and since then has grown in status on the upright, playing with many of Ireland’s leading jazz musicians such as Mike Nielsen, Louis Stewart, Richie Buckley, Michael Buckley, Gay McIntyre, Phil Ware and David Lyttle and guesting with eminent European jazz artists Sandro Gibellini and Bjorn Solli.
Eddie, since co-founding the Sligo based folk-world music group NoCrows in 2005, has toured Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, UK, Mallorca and Belgium with the group and played several major European festivals including Glastonbury Festival UK, Dranouter and Labadoux, Belgium.
2010: Currently bassist with jazz trio The Odd Couple, jazz/soul outfit The Swing and Soul Revue, and folk-world music group NoCrows.
As a composer/arranger Eddie was co-writer/arranger with Those Nervous Animals (1980’s), The Pale, The Good Zoo, Susan Rowland and Padraig Meehan & McKenzie (1990’s). Eddie is composer and co-arranger of many compositions in NoCrows’ repertoire. He produced “Show me that Chihuahua” by Sligo group Indian and co-produced many recordings by Those Nervous Animals, McKenzie, Ellamental and the Odd Couple.
Join the Hawk’s Well Theatre on Saturday 22nd of November in celebrating Eddie’s enormous contribution to music in Sligo, in Ireland and in the international jazz scene. Tickets for ‘Heh Mr. Bass Man’ are €20/18conc. and €15 for Friends and are available from the Hawk’s Well Theatre Box Office on 071 916 1518 or
For further information contact Maeve McGowan, Marketing Manager, Hawk’s Well Theatre, Sligo, 071 916 1518