New music
joe.muggs
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 more porous than some might like to believe.
And it was rather impressive how challenging the curators of the event were willing Read more ...
peter.quinn
Watching some jazz musicians play live, you're made acutely aware of the intense effort that goes into their performance. Conveying a non-verbal message that roughly translates as “this shit is really hard, you know”, tell-tale signs include the pained rictus of deep concentration, the sotto voce grunts, groans and exhalations, and the self-communing, head-down-to-the-floor mode adopted for solos of five minutes or longer.Observing Esperanza Spalding's sunny disposition in the hallowed confines of Ronnie Scott's, on the other hand, you get the impression that she's barely breaking a sweat. Read more ...
peter.quinn
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. Opening with an expansive, über-romantic solo from the pianist in free time, the piece unfolded quite beautifully with the layered introduction of Yuri Goloubev's bowed bass, James Maddren's understated percussion and Klaus Gesing's haunting soprano sax.Both bassist and drummer are members of Simcock's trio that features on his new Read more ...
howard.male
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 exotic musical DNA.Having said that, within the world music scene itself there are plenty of bands these Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
An ongoing series celebrating musicians' birthdays.
23 November 1876: Manuel de Falla's El Amor Brujo filmed as part of Carlos Saura's classic film dance trilogy.
{youtube width="400"}Ftd8tIdiYq4{/youtube} El Amor Brujo Carlos Saura26 November 1931: Tina Turner with husband Ike and backing singers the Ikettes perform Phil Spector's "symphony for the kids", "River Deep, Mountain High". Its relative lack of success in the States was, according to many, one reason he lost his grip on reality. Distorted but divine.
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25 November 1924: Paul Read more ...
joe.muggs
Immediately following the death of radio DJ John Peel in 2004, it became clear very rapidly that there was no obvious heir apparent. With so many specialist shows on the station, nobody ran the full gamut of leftfield and underground music in the same way that Peel had. But if anyone comes close, it is Mary Anne Hobbs. Schooled in rock and indie journalism in the last great era of the weekly music press, the mid-1980s to early 1990s, and presenter on XFM and then Radio 1 of everything from extreme heavy metal to deep electronica, she certainly approaches Peel's eclecticism and dedication to Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
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 saudade, that Brazilian word that is somewhere between nostalgia, melancholy and homesickness. It made for a reflective, downbeat evening, but as there have been many Gilberto Gils recorded over 50 albums, we should at least be grateful that the cheesy Eighties funk style was left at home.Gil first became famous in the late Sixties as one of the architects of tropicalia, along with fellow musicians of the intelligentsia from Bahia Read more ...
Anonymous
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.“We’re going to play something very simple,” she announces, before heading to the piano and picking out a melody: "Three Blind Mice". “You’ll hear all this in this next piece,” she continues, Read more ...
peter.quinn
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.Shaw has never been one to plough a narrow artistic furrow, favouring instead an inclusiveness that draws from several stylistic wells. A superbly paced first set embraced everything from Joni Mitchell's limpid “River” to “Blues in Read more ...
robert.sandall
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.
To accomplish this project she has reportedly worked with a total of 130 musicians across many roots and world genres including blues, bluegrass, Dixeland jazz, Celtic folk and Balkan dance tunes. Her collaborators have ranged from the Wynton Read more ...
Anonymous
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.Much of the playing was similarly noirish, in keeping with both the moody shadows of Stańko’s current publicity shots and the Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
A continuing series celebrating musicians' birthdays.22 November 1965: Bjørk released her first self-titled album at the age of 11, at 14 she was in a punk band called Spit and Snot, and has since gone on to be one of the most successful and original musicians on the planet. Many of her classic videos have had their sound removed on YouTube, but "All is Full of Love" directed by Chris Cunningham is up there still, and features the best lesbian robot love scene ever filmed.{youtube width="400"}EjAoBKagWQA{/youtube}Before leaving Bjork, perhaps we should have a guided tour of her house in Read more ...