jazz
Kieron Tyler
Too Late Blues has many individual aspects which, on their own, would make it notable. Released in 1961, it was John Cassavetes’ second film as a director following the ground-breaking Shadows, one of America’s first full-length expressionist art films. As Shadows had, it centres on jazz and depicts a world which was then thriving, showing it from the inside. It stars Bobby Darin, one of America’s most important and multi-faceted musical figures. When taken together, with the added impact of its female star Stella Stevens, its inclusion of black cast members and disabled children, Too Late Read more ...
Matthew Wright
As the name suggests, New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band was established to promote traditional New Orleans Jazz. This release is the band’s first of original material, and the fact they haven’t been short of a tune since foundation in 1961 only confirms what any jazz-lover will already know, that the traditional New Orleans repertoire is pretty well represented in the record catalogue already.The famous community spirit of New Orleans is reflected in two characteristics of the city’s music in particular: the quality of the ensemble playing, and the relaxed approach to genre. While the Read more ...
Matthew Wright
DJ, broadcaster and all-round musical pioneer Gilles Peterson is one of the most influential figures in contemporary music. In a career that has grown from a DIY pirate station to running a succession of record labels, global DJing appearances and his own Worldwide Awards, he’s become famous for his commitment to the most unexpected combinations of new sounds and genres, drawn from restless collaborations worldwide. His support for his own kind of jazz has been a consistent feature of his career, but he’s certainly not the purist of beard-stroking jazz folklore. His interest in Read more ...
Joe Muggs
As dance music once more sweeps the mainstream, we're returned to the situation of the 1990s where singer and song can seem to become a little detached. Parades of “featured vocalists” deliver refrains for the producer teams who are queueing up to repeat the success of Route 94, Clean Bandit, Duke Dumont and above all Disclosure. And as the field gets more crowded, so the requirements for the singers to sit back, know their place and deliver the simplest hooks become more pressing.Some new generation singers do manage to step into the spotlight of course. Rita Ora parlayed her big hit with DJ Read more ...
Matthew Wright
French band Pulcinella is little known over here, but the release of their third album Bestiole (meaning nothing more ribald than “tiny creatures”, apparently), coincides with a brief UK tour, and is looking like the beginnings of a breakthrough. A quartet of sax, accordion, percussion and bass, with an exotic array of guest instruments, they’re self-consciously experimental, but melodic and humorous with it. Their swirling sound-world of whimsical, gothic circus noir draws on jazz, tango and alt rock, but balances the mixture with feisty originality in independent territory in between.The Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Saturday commuters sprinting for the 17.33 to Ardrossan find themselves dodging an obstacle course of swing-dancing young couples, soundtracked by a pensionable trad jazz band. A shifting crowd of about 100 pause in their journeys at Glasgow Central station to enjoy Penman’s Jazzmen, skilful Scottish veterans comfortable with each other and the demands of this century-old New Orleans music.Four days into 2014’s Glasgow Jazz Festival, its existence will have been news to many of the Glaswegians entertained by this enterprising street gig. More obviously momentous events are signposted around Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s statement of intent to open your first British headlining show with a 15-minute version of an album track which lasts a minute and three-quarters – from an album which itself lasts barely more than 30 minutes. And then to riff on it, incorporating elements from a debut album which barely anyone beyond your native country has heard. In taking her current album No Deal’s “I Feel You” and merging it with A Stomach Is Burning’s “A Stomach”, Belgium’s Melanie De Biasio could have alienated an audience who had never seen her before. Instead, the sold-out Purcell Room gave her standing ovation. Read more ...
Matthew Wright
New Orleans. New York. Kansas City. Chicago. These are the places where the soul of jazz breathes free. In London, you’d head to Soho. Dalston, or Camden; none of these places have a blade of grass to share between them. Jazz must be one of the most determinedly urban genres of music. Even rap these days has flirted with country music. (Look up Spearhead’s entertaining “Wayfaring Stranger” if you don’t believe me.)So when I heard about an Austrian festival subtitled “Jazz am Bauernhof”, which literally means jazz on the farm, or jazz in the farmyard, the very idea of reconciling this musical Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Denmark’s Broken Twin take the lead in the latest of theartsdesk’s regular round-ups of the new music coming in from Scandinavia. Debut album May is melancholy. Minimally arranged, with lyrics addressing the pain brought by the passing of time, bleakness in the form of metaphorical references to weather and what happens after death, this is an affecting album. The sense of a lonely despair is reinforced by the defeated, distant voice of Majke Voss Romme – who is Broken Twin. May might fit clichés about Nordic chill, but the album draws from and sits proudly alongside landmark works of the Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The veteran South African jazzers Adam Glasser and Pinise Saul transformed the gleamingly elegant Crazy Coqs cabaret den into a throbbing township jazz club last night, with an exhilarating programme of original South African jazz, seasoned with standards and township folk. Joining forces with the percussionist Marcina Arnold, a relative newcomer to their ensembles, they roughed up this venue’s urbanity with unfamiliar fires of passion and yearning.As well as playing piano with a gallery of South African jazz greats, Glasser is noted for his work on the chromatic harmonica, and last night’s Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Jazz pianist Chick Corea put a bomb under his reverential “rare solo concert” billing at the Barbican last night, with an outrageously showmanlike variety performance that seemed to take in everyone from Keith Jarrett to Gareth Malone. Corea’s two ECM albums, Piano Improvisations (1971 and 1972), blazed a trail for similar work, music that was cerebral, even austere, from Paul Bley and the arguably even more distinguished Jarrett. Anyone expecting a similar experience last night will have left reeling not just at moments of sublime musicianship, but also at Corea’s multifarious Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Zara McFarlane’s exquisite synthesis of jazz and nu-soul, an intoxicating proposition on CD, breathes more freely live, we discovered, in last night’s Brighton Festival performance. A recent appearance on Later... with Jools Holland was mentioned discreetly, and has clearly buoyed her confidence, as she gave an utterly engrossing demonstration of why Holland, and before him, Brownswood Recordings’ Gilles Peterson are supporting her.The Old Market, packed and ecstatic, was intimate without being cramped, and afterwards there were far more fans jostling to have a CD signed than queuing for beer Read more ...