US pianist Craig Taborn to play the National Concert Hall in January 2022

North American pianist, organist, keyboardist and composer Craig Taborn will return to Ireland as part of his European tour of Shadow Plays.

Minnesota-born act Taborn, who played to a sold out-audience in Dublin in 2019, returns to the Irish capital for one night only on Saturday, January 29th 2022 at 6pm. Tickets are on sale here now. This is a golden opportunity to catch this innovative pianist virtuoso performing centre stage at the John Field Room in the National Concert Hall. It's sure to be an invigorating musical experience, given the prodigious talent's proficiency for improvisation.

Taborn was given a Moog synthesizer as a present when he was 12, around the same time he began playing piano. In his own words, he is "not a classically trained pianist at all"; he practiced with others, initially playing rock, progressive rock, and jazz fusion, before becoming more interested in jazz. Taborn studied at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from 1988.

Craig is internationally acclaimed for his formidable career, as a sideman, co-leader and as a soloist on ECM records, a label that has defined the high bar solo piano performance. While at university, Taborn toured and recorded with legendary jazz saxophonist James Carter. Taborn went on to play with numerous other musicians in electronic and acoustic settings, while also building a reputation as a solo pianist.

He has long backed many of the most forward-thinking improvisers, including Tim Berne, Chris Potter and Dave Douglas. In 2011, Down Beat magazine chose Taborn as winner of the electric keyboard category, as well as rising star in both the piano and organ categories. By the end of 2020, Taborn had appeared on 14 albums as a leader or co-leader and more than 100 as a sideman.

A fearless improviser, he has a reputation for "disappearing almost completely into his music", as the New York Times once wrote, and is recognised as one of the best living jazz pianists.

With his latest ECM release, Shadow Plays, Taborn explores sounds and silences, swirling colours, densities and forms, creating new music with both poetic imagination and an iron grip on his material. His control of his craft, as he unerringly creates narratives and structures from the hint of a revealed pattern, following where intuition and experience lead him, is truly one of a kind. Don't miss his January 29th Dublin stint.