A painting in the arrivals hall at Cork Airport has long shown many of the greats who have played the city’s jazz festival. Upfront are four legends of the music – Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and Wynton Marsalis – while, further back in the gallery, you can spot such stars as Chick Corea, George Shearing, Buddy Rich, Jan Garbarek and Joshua Redman. The event, now in its 47th year, is by far Ireland’s leading jazz celebration, and the image speaks of a long and proud tradition.

For many years the painting was given a prominent position – Cork Airport is among the sponsors of the festival – and would get noticed by people waiting to meet loved ones. More recently, however, it has become harder to find. A little while ago the painting was moved to a new spot, where it was partly obscured by a large cash machine.

The last time I passed through the airport, the group portrait was nowhere to be seen. Its removal may have been a result of the current redevelopment of the arrivals area, but for many music fans and long-time devotees of the festival, it was hard not to see it as entirely symbolic.

There has been a debate about the amount and type of jazz programmed at the festival almost from its inception, in 1978, and it’s true that the embarrassing bad old days of the inclusion of pop, rock and indie acts such as The Boomtown Rats, Gary Numan, Aslan, The Coronas and Picture This being shoehorned into the festivities have passed. Over the past few years, however, the actual jazz content has increasingly seemed in danger.

In fact, the line-up at this month’s jamboree is one of the most disappointing and dispiriting for quite some time. A jazz-loving friend has taken to calling the gathering “Guinness Cork Non-Jazz Festival”. An Irish musician I know goes a stage further: he refers to it as the “anti-jazz festival”.

Some of the more printable comments left on the event’s official social-medi