jazz
Albums of the Year: Christine Tobin - PeltSunday, 01 January 2017
Despite all of the challenges – more venues going to the wall, scarcity of funding, lack of column inches, and more – jazz in 2016 showed its seemingly endless capacity not only to survive and thrive, but also to innovate and invigorate. As one of... Read more... |
Albums of the Year: Shabaka and the Ancestors - Wisdom of EldersWednesday, 21 December 2016
The future direction of jazz has been the subject of anxious discussion for at least 50 years, and the last few have seen particular fervent speculation, usually provoked by another tedious “death of jazz” article. Fortunately, such pieces almost... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Sun RaSunday, 18 December 2016
Attempts to steer a straightforward path through the music of Sun Ra have always been hampered by the volume of records issued, their limited availability and trying to work out whether they represent something he had a hand in releasing. Just... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Mose Allison, Georgie FameSunday, 27 November 2016
In 1970, The Who opened their Live at Leeds album with “Young Man Blues”, a hefty version of a song its composer Mose Allison recorded as “Blues” in 1957. Back then, it was the only vocal track on Back Country Suite, an otherwise instrumental blues-... Read more... |
CD: Xam Duo - Xam DuoWednesday, 23 November 2016
Everything about Xam Duo’s debut album, out earlier this month on Sonic Cathedral, has a wonderful sense of self-indulgence: from the freeform, experimental feel, the stretched-out tones and resulting melodies that exist almost by implication, to... Read more... |
Wayne Shorter Quartet, BarbicanTuesday, 22 November 2016
At 83, and with 60-odd years on the road, Wayne Shorter could be forgiven for, in a musical sense, getting the slippers and pipe out and knocking out comfortable versions of his hits, the classic tunes he wrote for Miles Davis among them, like “... Read more... |
Rava / Herbert / Guidi + Murgia, Kings PlaceSaturday, 19 November 2016
There was an Italian flavour to the EFG London Jazz Festival programme at Kings Place on Thursday night. Enrico Rava is an eminent statesman of European jazz, who emerged in the 1960s as a disciple of Miles Davis. He was collaborating with young... Read more... |
Jim Rattigan's Pavillon, Seven Arts, LeedsSaturday, 19 November 2016
French horn players active in jazz are thin on the ground: there’s the long-deceased John Graas, and composer and polymath Gunther Schuller’s career took in collaborations with Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. Unlike most brass instruments, the horn... Read more... |
Norma Winstone, Cadogan HallFriday, 18 November 2016
For fans of vocal jazz and fine lyric writing, this 75th birthday concert for the inimitable Norma Winstone offered a treasure trove of riches. From intimate chamber jazz to the gravitas of a full orchestra, the two sets seamlessly blended every... Read more... |
Lizz Wright, Cadogan HallMonday, 14 November 2016
There are singers who can dazzle with their technical mastery, those who welcome you into their musical world through a special communicative gift, and those who can traverse genres with absolutely no artifice. Rarest of all are those singers who... Read more... |
Michael Wollny Trio + Andrew McCormack, Kings PlaceSunday, 13 November 2016
This rambunctious German-Swiss trio is used to selling out much larger venues at home. Their overdue EFG London Jazz Festival debut, in an enthusiastic but not full Kings Place, introduced British audiences to an exhilarating take on the acoustic... Read more... |
Jazz Voice, Royal Festival HallSaturday, 12 November 2016
Following the seismic events across the pond earlier this week, an outcome which has left the rest of the world blinking in disbelief, Guy Barker’s brilliant arrangements for this year’s Jazz Voice offered much needed balm for the soul. Creativity,... Read more... |
