New music
Matthew Wright
Until recently, The National were a band for the knowing connoisseur, best known for their wry wit and tasteful guitar sheen. They seemed too niche for the O2 Arena, where they played their biggest ever UK headline last night. But that big tent of consumerism has now claimed them, and before an appreciative but rather lukewarm audience, somehow they seemed a little more ordinary and mainstream.It felt like a night of two halves, in which – rather like one of the band’s songs, famous for their late crescendos – the second half picked up significantly, culminating in a funky, brass-driven Read more ...
peter.quinn
The weapon of choice of wannabe jazz chanteuses the world over, the fact that London-based singer, songwriter and composer Fini Bearman chose to deliver the ubiquitous “Summertime” as a wordless meditation almost made me weep with gratitude.The closing song of this eight-track homage to Gershwin's operatic masterpiece, “Prayer (Summertime)” typifies the way in which Bearman and her superb quintet cast fresh light on material that has long since been imprinted on our consciousness. Beginning with scattered phrases in free time, it builds inexorably. As Bearman's voice soars ever higher, the Read more ...
Thomas Rees
It’s not easy to write about a gig when you’re still shaking with adrenaline, still less so when that gig is the grand finale of the 2014 EFG London Jazz Festival, the climax to a giddy ten days of world-class contemporary music. But it’s a cross I’ll have to bear, because last night’s performance from legendary saxophonist Charles Lloyd and jazz giants tenorist Joe Lovano and trumpeter Dave Douglas demands it.Appearing as part of their Sound Prints quintet, completed by young pianist Lawrence Fields, bassist Linda Oh and the ebullient Joey Baron on drums, it was Douglas and Lovano who took Read more ...
peter.quinn
Imaginatively constructed and endlessly surprising, this world premiere of the complete version of pianist Robert Mitchell's choral work Invocation elicited one of the most moving performances I had the pleasure of hearing at this year's EFG London Jazz Festival. Written as “a personal and universal thank you to life-changing teachers”, the vast, six-movement work skilfully interweaved the improvised with the composed, resulting in a score of quite astonishing richness and variety.The cast included the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and its chorusmaster (and powerful baritone singer) Gavin Carr Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Mind Fair, whose members comprise Dean "Chicken Lips" Meredith and Ben Shenton, has released a slew of imaginative and wildly different singles on their own label, Rogue Cat Sounds, as well as International Feel and Golf Channel. However, on hearing this accomplished debut album, you get the feeling that, good as these are, they’ve all been amuse bouches before the banquet.After some scene-setting, incidental fairground frippery, things kick off with “Green Fingers (Love From Above)”. The zither, distorted psychedelic guitar and bass that drinks deep from the subcultural well of the past 30 Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Kassé Mady Diabaté is one of the great singers of West Africa, a member of Toumani Diabaté's Symmetric Orchestra and, more recently, the Afrocubism all-star line-up. His latest album Kiriké (Horse’s Saddle) on the Parisian No Format label is a beautiful return to his acoustic, traditional roots as a singer, produced by French cellist Vincent Segal and featuring kora maestro Ballaké Sissoko, Lansiné Kouyaté on balafon and Makan Tounkara on ngoni, conjuring up the spirits and messages of centuries-old Bambara songs of the ancient Manding Empire. This music runs deep. The kora of the south, the Read more ...
peter.quinn
Paying homage to the legendary imprint that brought us 'The Finest In Jazz Since 1939', this concert on the penultimate evening of the EFG London Jazz Festival really did have everything, including the unlikely sight of master pianist Robert Glasper pirouetting across the Royal Festival Hall stage. The first half saw Glasper in duo with fellow NYC-based Houstonian, pianist Jason Moran, in an extraordinary, hour-long set that referenced jazz past, present and future.Performing on two Steinway grand pianos, nestled together on a dramatically lit stage, the duo's free, rhapsodic intro Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Susan Boyle’s 2009 Britain’s Got Talent audition was one of the great coups of reality TV, her success surprising and inspiring in equal measure. It’s some time now, though, since she has surprised anyone, and while her voice is still the lithe, purring instrument that so astonished Piers Morgan, her act clings to the tried and tested which, despite a mixed reception for her live tour, can still empty Sony’s warehouses like no other.Having a limited expressive range doesn’t necessarily matter when you’re good at what you do. We shouldn’t expect Boyle to turn into Piaf or Winehouse any more Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Jon Hassell / Brian Eno: Fourth World Vol. 1 - Possible MusicsIts opening is exotic. The music shimmers like heat haze and incorporates a sing-song instrument which might be a treated trumpet, or a high-register bass guitar reverberating like water on distant rocks and pattering percussion. “Chemistry”, the opening track on Jon Hassell and Brian Eno’s 1980 album Fourth World Vol. 1 - Possible Musics, melded the ambient to serialism and what became both electronica and world music.Possible Musics is a stunningly beautiful album. Its reissue on album and CD brings an opportunity to Read more ...
Barney Harsent
I’m not sure exactly how much it costs to rent out Abbey Road’s Studio 2, the room in which the Beatles recorded all their good stuff; the studio where, now, the “Lady Madonna” piano is shoved to one side to make way, but I’m guessing it’s lots. I, along with 30 or so other people, am here to listen to Listen, David Guetta’s fourth album. Judging by the venue, the opulent decor and the free bar, it’s one that, I suspect, he really wants us to like.David arrives and is, in equal parts, funny, polite and engaging. He starts by introducing “What I Did For Love”, a collaboration with Emeli Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
If you were to wander in off the streets and catch this band randomly you would be amazed to find such accomplished musicians. But this wasn’t any old gig, it was one of the masters of jazz, Tomasz Stanko. It should have been one of the highlights of the EFG London Jazz Festival and expectations were running high.Stanko is known for his lyrical trumpet playing, reminiscent of mid-period Miles Davis, and has been a towering figure in Polish jazz. For the uninitiated, Poland has been one the centres of jazz since the 1950s. “Jazz was freedom for us, the opposite of communism”, as Stanko pointed Read more ...
Matthew Wright
John McLaughlin made history at the Royal Festival Hall 25 years ago when he recorded a superb album featuring Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu. Last night’s performance with his fusion quartet 4th Dimension was not epochal in quite that way. The repertoire and style was largely familiar, much of it released on the band’s album earlier this year, the pieces in many cases reworked from earlier McLaughlin material. But it was remarkable for the excellence and of the ensemble playing. The sensitivity and sheer quality of interaction within the band embodied the interest in loving spirituality Read more ...