jazz
Sebastian Scotney
Jazz musicians of just about all ages and persuasions have been on show in this year’s 10-day EFG London Jazz Festival. Some were making their first mark, some taking stock of who and where they are, some trying new things or changing where they’re headed, others who’ve said yes to commissions, and others whose craft, identity and choices are totally persuasive. Charles Mingus got it right. “In my music,” he said, “I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.”One musician who has a whole career in front of him and who is bound to Read more ...
David Nice
One part of the brain, they tell us, responds to visual art and another, quite different, to music; we can't cope adequately with both at once. Which is why I'm often wary of those musical organisations which think that what we hear needs to be livened up with more to see: mixing Debussy with so-called "Impressionists", for instance, or Stravinsky with Cubism. A case can all the same be made for paintings which inspire composers, and vice versa, even if it's still a stretch to handle both simultaneously. This was the interesting experiment that Latvian musicians have just applied to the work Read more ...
peter.quinn
Aside from her incredible time feel, exceptional range and consistently beautiful timbre, what was most impressive about Jazzmeia Horn’s bravura performance at a sold-out Ronnie Scott’s was the sense of joyousness and vitality that coursed through her music-making.Listening to the singer’s phrasing in a blistering, gear-changing account of “Willow Weep For Me”, she took more risks during the course of a single chorus than some vocalists do throughout their entire career. And while Horn has always been quick to give her esteemed musical antecedents, vocalists Sarah Vaughan and Betty Carter, Read more ...
peter.quinn
After failing to make the charts on its release 50 years ago this month, Astral Weeks has long since passed into pop mythology, its unique amalgam of jazz, folk and soul influences inspiring musicians, writers and filmmakers alike.Martin Scorsese said that he based the first 15 minutes of Taxi Driver on the album, Rickie Lee Jones has called it “still daring, still innovative”, Bruce Springsteen, who chose “Madame George” when he was a guest on Desert Island Discs, stated that the album “made me trust in beauty, it gave me a sense of the divine”, while in the 1979 anthology Stranded: Rock and Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The choice of what to go and hear in the London Jazz Festival can be bewildering: this first weekend of its 10-day run presented over 120 events. I managed to attend eight, of them at least in part, including some of the show that has predictably soaked up most of the media attention: the first of Jeff Goldblum’s two concerts on Saturday at a packed Cadogan Hall.Goldblum’s credentials as an A-List celebrity, as an entertainer, as a stage presence, as a charmer, as a quick-witted comic improviser are in no doubt. He can turn literally anything into part of a highly entertaining show and have Read more ...
Marianka Swain
The road to full musical theatre production has been a long one for Hadestown. It began back in 2006, with Anaïs Mitchell’s song cycle – a folk/jazz take on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth – toured around Vermont in a school bus, then grew into an ecstatically received concept album in 2010, and has gone through further development with director Rachel Chavkin in Off-Broadway and Canadian stagings. Now, it comes to the National ahead of a Broadway run.Whatever its past or future forms, Chavkin’s staging is a superb fit for the Olivier. Rachel Hauck’s spare, multi-level speakeasy set, which Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
When Jazz on a Summer's Day was first seen in American cinemas in March 1960, it showed that seeing popular music live could be a leisure activity akin to watching high-end sports. Indeed, director Bert Stern intercut the musical performances he captured on film with footage of yachts trying-out for 1958’s America’s Cup. The audience at Rhode Island’s July 1958 Newport Jazz Festival were caught in the congenial surroundings of the Freebody Park over the event’s four days expressing their appreciation in, generally, a reserved and grown-up fashion.Chuck Berry, who played Newport on the Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Wow, this is truly infectious! Feel-good music played so well and by a guy whose day job is as an actor. And not a bit-part player – this is the man who gave us David Levinson in Independence Day and Dr Iain Malcolm in Jurassic Park and who made his screen debut with Charles Bronson in Death Wish. He also had a cameo in Annie Hall, one of the most beloved of movies by another part-time jazz man. “I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel to be Free)” is a nice nod to what is now a dual career.Take a bow Jeff Goldblum who, with a little help from friends Imelda May, Haley Reinhart, Sarah Silverman and Read more ...
Ellie Porter
“We will be taking you on a journey,” promises Caro Emerald at the start of tonight’s return to the Royal Albert Hall, which she last played back in April 2017 – and for the next 90 minutes, that’s what jazz-pop queen Emerald and her slick seven-piece band, the Grandmono Orchestra, do. Having bustled in from the cold and dark Halloween night, the audience is ready to be swept away to somewhere a lot more sunny.Prior to departure, however, is a sombre, six-song set by Loren Nine – not a nine-piece jazz combo but a diminutive Dutch singer-songwriter who sits down at her keyboard and smilingly Read more ...
theartsdesk
Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why. Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. ★★★★★ A small but perfectly sleazy work of sweary, cynical brillianceBob Dylan - More Blood, More Tracks ★★★★★ The fourteenth volume in the Bootleg Series is a keeperBrad Mehldau Trio - Seymour Reads the Constitution! ★★★★★ Prolific improvising pianist creates the apotheosis of the piano trioThe Breeders - All Nerve ★★★★★ Kim and Kelly Deal - plus Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
There’s been a lot of conjecture over the last couple of years about HD Vinyl. It is, we’re told, a more precise and rounded analogue experience, taking record-listening to the next level. The company’s Austrian MD Guenter Loibl has explained that the process uses “a laser-cut ceramic instead of electroplated metal stampers” to achieve results that add 30% more audio information to a record. Sounds great. Bring it on. Just don’t go all CD on us and charge the earth. Because that old vinyl still sounds very good, both the new ones that arrive at theartsdesk on Vinyl each day and the ones that Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Gary Burton fans with an eye for detail will know that “Fly Time Fly (Sigh)” from his second album, 1962’s Who Is Gary Burton?, had a writer credit of “Gibbs”. The American vibes-ace’s next album, 1963’s 3 in Jazz, a collaboration with Sonny Rollins and Clark Terry included another song by Gibbs. Burton’s follow-up solo album, Something's Coming! (1964), featured two Gibbs compositions. In 1967, half the tracks on Burton’s Duster were written by Gibbs.Gibbs was trombonist/composer Michael Gibbs. He did not play on Burton’s recordings and, perhaps belatedly, issued his first solo album in 1970 Read more ...