New Music Reviews
Trouble Tune: Bass Clef, Geiom, London Improvisers OrchestraMonday, 23 November 2009
There are occasional days when the Royal Festival Hall really feels like the people's palace it was always meant to be – and yesterday, with its free concert of live improvisation mixed with dubstep and electronica in the RFH bar, was absolutely one of them. Rave kids, pensioners, parents with babes in arms and some particularly energetic school-age children all proved that given the right context music the border between “challenging” music and entertainment is... Read more...
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Esperanza Spalding, Ronnie Scott'sMonday, 23 November 2009
Watching some jazz musicians play live, you're made acutely aware of the intense effort that goes into their performance. Read more... |
Gwilym Simcock, Queen Elizabeth HallSunday, 22 November 2009
Melodically rich, harmonically daring, rhythmically subtle, pianist Gwilym Simcock's quartet piece, “Longing To Be”, which kicked off last night's Queen Elizabeth Hall gig was one of the most jaw-dropping performances I've heard at this year's London Jazz Festival. Read more... |
Transglobal Underground, RichmixSunday, 22 November 2009
Why aren’t more bands like Transglobal Underground? This is not a fatuous question. After all, we live in a joyously multicultural society so one would expect more ethnic influences would have seeped into the mainstream by now. But no, apart from some African guitar riffs adding a veneer of ethnicity to the occasional white college-boy rock group, and some bangra beats spicing up the odd dancefloor hit, the UK and US pop scene seem on the whole to remain hermetically sealed against such... Read more... |
Gilberto Gil, RFHFriday, 20 November 2009
The last time I saw Gilberto Gil play he was performing high-energy reggae with an electric band. Last night, though, it was an autumnal, acoustic trio full of ... Read more... |
Carla Bley and the Lost Chords, QEHWednesday, 18 November 2009
Slender limbs, intense eyes, and dressed entirely in black: if it wasn’t for the straightened blonde hair, Carla Bley could pass for a jazz Patti Smith. She is also, of course, one of the genre’s most acclaimed composer-arrangers, and her return to London is much anticipated. Before she plays a note, the septuagenarian Californian walks awkwardly, defiantly, to a microphone at the front of the stage. Read more... |
Ian Shaw, Pizza Express Jazz ClubWednesday, 18 November 2009
As acts of musical funambulism go, a solo gig by a jazz singer ranks pretty high in the fearless stakes. Listening to Ian Shaw in the intimate surroundings of Pizza Express Jazz Club, without the safety net of bass or drums, you suddenly remember how thrilling it can be to hear songs that have long been absorbed into your consciousness being recast entirely anew. Read more... |
Natalie Merchant, Conway HallTuesday, 17 November 2009
As a curtain raiser for the most ambitious album of her career to date, Natalie Merchant’s concert last night at London’s Conway Hall was an entertaining but strangely low-key affair. Merchant has spent the past six years recording dozens of songs based on poems themed around childhood, 28 of which she plans to release on two CDs early next year.
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Tomasz Stańko Quintet, QEHMonday, 16 November 2009
There’s something of a Polish theme to the London Jazz Festival 2009, part of the “Polska! year” celebration of that nation’s art and culture. Trumpeter Tomasz Stańko is by some margin the strand’s biggest name. The man who once explained the mournful, meditative tone of his (and his country’s) music in terms of the “melancholy light” he’d known since birth took to the stage in appropriately sombre attire: suit, shirt and hat alike in any colour as long as it was black. Read more... |
London Jazz Festival: Roberto Fonseca & Mayra AndradeSaturday, 14 November 2009
I have seen Roberto Fonseca play before – in Havana backing Omara Portuondo and in London with the incomparable Ibrahim Ferrer - so although I was well aware of his ferocious talent I had no idea of how he would fare as a solo star. And I have seen plenty of jazz before, including Latin-style jazz – but only in venues the size of pub function rooms, generally full of nicotine-stained old men, so I had some trepidation about how it would come over in a venue as... Read more... |
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