Colette Cassidy/ Nigel Clark Duo

Colette Cassidy & Nigel Clark first meet at the Croatia Jazz Festival in 2005. They were both there performing with different projects. It was to prove to be an important encounter. Some years later Nigel moved to Dublin and the musicians began to perform together. They were both aware of the musical chemistry between them. Colette’s rich and luxurious tone complimented Nigel sophisticated and decisive guitar play.

They started to work on building a reportaire. They were exploring pop tunes and re-arranging them. Out of the blue one day Nigel asked Colette had she ever written songs. Colette hadn’t but she went home and a couple of days later came back with a set of lyrics. Nigel who was experienced in editing lyrics was impressed with the musicality of the lyrics that read like a poem. There was very little work to be done with the lyrics and they set about composing the melody for their first song, “When you’re in Love”. Colette describes it like the “elves and the shoemaker”. She would go home and labour at nights on end to compile lyrics and return to Nigel with the completed work. Colette had a lot to say! Her life experiences included the ups and downs of love and romance but also included her love and devotion to her son James in a ”A Mother’s Love”.

Nigel would find the right chords to develop upon very quickly and from there they would improvise back and forth to come up with the melodies to match Colette’s lyrics.
When they started working towards the idea of doing an album together they had thought that they would mix some of their new compositions with some jazz standards and even some jazzy pop tunes. However they soon came to the realisation that the material they were composing was very strong and each new song gave them more and more confidence to continue. The whole process was working, the lyrics were working, the melodies were working and so they kept going until they had a complete album.

Confetti Falling in the Rain is a sophisticated thought provoking album which goes far beyond “just another jazz project”. It sits perfectly with a mature listener who seeks to hear new music aimed at their more developed taste. Pop lyrics with a jazzy sound creates the right kind of image of the album.

We hope you enjoy your album and feel as moved by it as Colette and Nigel did in making it.