jazz
joe.muggs
Carl Craig is extraordinarily easygoing. Most dance producers of his seniority and level of achievement would come with at least a publicist in tow, but when we meet him in his London hotel, his only entourage is his nine-year-old son, playing happily with an iPad or chatting to the photographer as we talk, and Craig is very easy and engaging company. One might expect someone more driven-seeming, given that, in the notoriously fickle world of club music, he has managed to keep both fiercely snobbish techno fans and mainstream club audiences on side for over two decades, branching out Read more ...
peter.quinn
As star pianist Gwilym Simcock amusingly recalled during his solo set last night, German efficiency almost scuppered the making of his latest and universally acclaimed release, Good Days at Schloss Elmau. Recorded at the deluxe Alpine spa in just a single day last September, the pianist's Herculean keyboard feats were made against a subliminal backing track of meadows being mown and kitchen deliveries being made. The results, tractors and bratwurst notwithstanding, suggest that the crisp mountain air clearly agreed with him.Launching the album in the slightly less tony environs of Camden Read more ...
joe.muggs
Club music has always been hard to keep track of, and never more so than in the current climate of constant genre meltdown and cross-fertilisation. Which is why the DJ's art is more important than ever, particularly in the case of scene figureheads like the indefatigable Gilles Peterson – known for over 20 years as a patron of all things jazzy, but lately proving brilliantly adept at reaching all corners of what he refers to as “left-field dance music”. Shows like his are ideal – necessary, even – for nurturing, contextualising and showcasing new generation genre-agnostic talents like Read more ...
peter.quinn
McCartney and Wonder. Jagger and Bowie. Mullard and Baker. Music history teaches us that the star collaboration doesn't always transmute into artistic gold. The Chairman of the Board himself, with a little help from Vandross, Streisand, Bono et al, had a spectacular misfire with Duets Vol 1. Mercilessly butchering many of Francis Albert's best-known songs, the results, artistically speaking, aren't so much a case of, “Yeah, I once recorded with Sinatra, you know,” as, “Number of copies: entire stock. Ship to: my private nuclear bunker.” And that title, Duets, is a bit rich. But then Frank Read more ...
theartsdesk
In the next instalment of our Year Out/Year In series, theartsdesk's New Music writers cast a critical eye over 2010, and offer some recommendations for 2011, incorporating some very funky videos. Our selection of recommended albums from the past year ranges wildly over electronica, world, jazz, indie, rock and folk. We also note some disasters and sad losses. Written by Howard Male, Peter Culshaw, Russ Coffey, Peter Quinn, Bruce Dessau, Kieron Tyler and Thomas H Green.PETER CULSHAWGood things about 2010 Brad Mehldau's surpisingly successful mix of classical, film and jazz music for the Read more ...
ash.smyth
For hundreds of years now the island currently known as Sri Lanka has had a thriving musical culture (or cultures, not to politicise the issue). There’s been folk music for as long as there’ve been folks. The various strata of society have refined their ceremonial music, be it sacred or profane. Each ethnic group in each part of the island has hived off its own sub-genres over the centuries. And in the colonial era (eras) a whole new batch of influences arrived, fully formed, ready to be adopted wholesale or adapted and integrated for local use.As we push on into the second decade of the 21st Read more ...
marcus.odair
"Being asked to introduce this artist”, began the compere, “is like being asked to introduce God." Fans of Eric Clapton, of course, might beg to differ. But in jazz terms, Sonny Rollins, self-proclaimed “saxophone colossus”, has indisputably been on the all-time A-list since his early work with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. He is also on a particularly exclusive part of that list of jazz greats: those still alive. Yet even amongst those few, whose resilient ranks include both Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman, Rollins’s London Jazz Festival performance represented a quite remarkable feat of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Musical luminaries including Mick Jagger, Paul Weller, Ray Davies and Liam Gallagher are lending their support to a campaign to save The 100 Club, the historic music venue in London’s Oxford Street. Soaring business rates of £4000 a month and an annual rental bill of £166,000 have driven the club to the brink of bankruptcy, and unless the savethe100club campaign proves successful, it faces closure by Christmas.Club owner Jeff Horton says: “The Government, Westminster council and even some of the commercial landlords say they want to help small businesses, they say they want to preserve Read more ...
peter.quinn
Another sold-out gig, another standing ovation, another memorable night. A sprightly 89 years old, the vocal pipes may not be quite so silky, but on the first of a three-night run at Ronnie Scott's, Jon Hendricks – dubbed the “James Joyce of jive” by Time magazine - still had the chops to show why he's considered one of the most original and influential singers in jazz.Actually, to call this a gig sells the evening short by a country mile. Accompanied by a trio of vocalists - his daughters Aria and Michele, plus Kevin Fitzgerald Burke - this show was part family “git-together”, part Read more ...
sue.steward
“Hot sweaty tight jammed in can’t breathe heart pumping centre of the universe Monday night action in town. Racing down to Bar Rumba at midnight through the blaring siren wailing darkness of south London to the tinsel town wet streeted fakeness of the West End and the That’s How it Is sessions, Gilles Peterson, James Lavelle, UFO, Patrick Forge, Roni Size spin…” [sic] Peter Williams, London, 1994.That was written by the photographer whose 70 black-and-white photographs are showing at a blink-and-you-miss-it gallery in east London until Saturday. Since the heyday of London’s New Jazz scene in Read more ...
marcus.odair
It's now over 20 years since saxophonist Jason Yarde emerged, aged just 16, with pioneering London collective The Jazz Warriors. Since then he has played with big hitters like McCoy Tyner, Hugh Masekela and Roy Ayers, as well as a younger generation including Gwilym Simcock and Soweto Kinch. Yet he's more than an in-demand sideman, having also established himself as a composer and arranger in his own right through work for the LSO and BBC Concert Orchestra.
Both sides of that personality were evident at Chelsea’s sober 606 Club for this London Jazz Festival show, Yarde’s first appearance at Read more ...
peter.quinn
A member of Miles Davis's legendary second quintet (“arguably Miles's best ever group” according to the Penguin Jazz Guide); a composer of standards (“Watermelon Man”, “Dolphin Dance”, “Maiden Voyage”, “Cantaloupe Island”) and soundtracks (Antonioni's Blow-Up, Bertrand Tavernier's Round Midnight); winner of over 10 Grammy Awards, the first for his 1983 hit single “Rockit”, the most recent for his magnificent 2007 Joni Mitchell tribute album River: The Joni Letters (one of only two jazz recordings to win the coveted Album of the Year award, the other being Getz/Gilberto over 40 years ago). Read more ...