jazz
Sebastian Scotney
Joshua Redman's Still Dreaming Quartet is a project surrounded by an abundance of facts, context and backstories. Jazz folk really like that stuff. If fans can’t get enough of all the interconnections and the minutiae, the truth is that a concert stands or falls by what actually happens in the moment, whether it actually works or doesn't. And in this Barbican set, the first of a short European tour, Redman, cornetist Ron Miles, bassist Scott Colley and Brian Blade at the drums really did deliver. These are four players whose immediacy of response, virtuosity, ability to raise the temperature Read more ...
howard.male
Who doesn’t like the rolling swagger of a bunch of seasoned Louisiana musicians? And that’s what New Yorker McCalla has assembled here to create a wider sound pallet for her third album. But we don’t just get a dozen generic New Orleans jazz tunes here. There’s also a calypso, a Zydeco dance number, a rollicking boogie-woogie and a doom-laden rocker with a Hendrix-style solo from Jimmy Horn that's like a knife slashing a canvas. And then to go straight into a Hawaiian guitar-drenched ballad?! I’ve not heard such a delightful collision of moods since the Velvets set “The Black Angel Death Song Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“I want to be a man without any past,” said Michel Legrand, who has died at the age of 86. He had perhaps the longest past in showbiz. Orchestrator, pianist, conductor, composer of countless soundtracks, who else has collaborated as widely - with Miles Davis and Kiri Te Kanawa, Barbra Streisand and Jean-Luc Godard, Gene Kelly, Joseph Losey and Edith Piaf? When I visited him at his house at his splendid classical manoir 100km south of Paris, on the mantelpiece in the large white sitting room four familiar gilt statuettes stood sentry. The oldest was for “Windmills of My Mind”, the best Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Great music is often born of “what if”s. What if we played Beach Boys-style songs lo-fi, loud, at high velocity? What if we played indie guitar with a hint of Congolese rumba? What if we added a string section to late-Sixties pop-rock? What if we tried to play disco even though we can’t play our instruments at all? That sort of thing. Que Vola’s debut album wonders what would happen if you combined John Coltrane-flavoured serious jazz with stark Afro-Cuban tribal percussion. It turns out to be a welcome experiment.“Que Vola” loosely translates as “What’s up”, a usual greeting in Cuba and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Releases dedicated to previously unisssued live recordings can be tricky. The variables at play don’t necessarily ensure that what’s in the shops is worth investigating. The audio sources may be of sub-standard quality or capture an off night. Some live performances are by rote: touring acts can do the same set night after night and things get stale. Who wants to hear yet another version of a familiar composition or song? It goes on.Equally, there may be a chance that what’s heard for the first time (officially) might be an essential addition to a stellar back catalogue. Then, there are Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Norway’s Hedvig Mollestad Trio reset the dial to what jazz fusion sought to do when it emerged, and do so in such a way that it’s initially unclear whether they are a jazz-influenced heavy metal outfit or jazzers plunging feet-first into metal. Riffs form the basis of their instrumentals, with improvisation following on from that though within rigidly structured formats. A composition's main melodic themes and rhythms are never far away. Theirs is not a music of aimless, flaccid noodling or of playing so mired in technical proficiency that it requires multiple degrees in musicology to grasp Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The title comes from a slogan used in a 1920s newspaper ad for Weinberg’s, a gramophone, record and sheet music shop in Brick Lane. Readers saw the words in Yiddish though. Brick Lane was central to London’s Jewish East End and those who lived in the area after the escaping the eastern European pogroms of the late 19th century brought their popular culture with them – a popular culture which, like any other arriving here, evolved and enriched Britain.Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World: Yiddisher Jazz in London's East End 1920s–1950s collects British Jewish-themed jazz and dance Read more ...
peter.quinn
A 3CD set featuring 17 singers, 34 tracks and over three hours of uniquely rewarding music, my Album of the Year, Voices Fall From The Sky by the NYC-based musician, improviser, composer, educator and author William Parker, represented an inexhaustible treasure trove for lovers of song.Cécile McLorin Salvant’s The Window offered yet more astonishing examples of her captivating art, whether breathing new life into Buddy Johnson’s ‘Ever Since the One I Love’s Been Gone’ or dusting down a hidden gem such as Cole Porter’s ‘Were Thine That Special Face’.The Questions presented Kurt Elling’s Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
In 2017, the BBC Wales team with director Rhodri Huw filmed a Christmas show in the old 1888 Coal Exchange in Cardiff, now a hotel. Tom Jones and Beverley Knight’s Gospel Christmas was an exciting and upbeat show, which ended in an electrifying “Born in Bethlehem”. Knight was jumping around as if she’d had springs fitted, the radio mic on her back somehow staying attached to her.This year, they returned to the same building and went jazz with Merry Christmas Baby - with Gregory Porter & Friends. Instead of the hwyl and the energy, this year’s Welsh seasoning, liberally applied, was Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
2018. Another year when strong presences who have shaped and defined the music for decades, and whom one had fondly imagined might be around for ever, are gone from our midst. Unique vocalists Aretha Franklin and Nancy Wilson have passed away. And trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Tomasz Stańko. And a true original of the piano, Cecil Taylor. In France, the jazz scene was shocked to its core in February by a death which came completely from the blue. One of the greats of jazz violin, an energetic and pivotal figure in French jazz, Didier Lockwood, was suddenly gone at the age of Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Matthew Bourne has been a significant experimental and collaborative presence on the scene since 2001, when he won the Perrier Jazz Award. This project with musician-producing duo Nightports (Adam Martin and Mark Slater) is the first of a series planned by Leaf Label, all following a simple rule that only sounds produced by the featured musician, in this case Bourne, can be included. To give himself the widest available palette, pianist Bourne assembled a selection of instruments from honkytonk to hoity-toity, which offer a fascinating range of textures. Balance is sometimes presented Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
If a new soundtrack for L'Année dernière à Marienbad was needed, Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds is it. Thematically, the collaboration between Norwegian guitarist Kim Myhr, French-Norwegian poet Caroline Bergvall, the Québécois string quartet Quatour Bozzini and Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach hits the film’s pressure points: the slippages between experience and perception of space and time. Lyrically and musically, the six tracks connect with the images conjured for the screen by the Alains Resnais and Robbe-Grillet as everything about the album is fluid.While Myhr’s glistening acoustic Read more ...