jazz
peter.quinn
Crazed magnificence, off the cuff improv, pinpoint timing. And that was just MC and trombonist Ashley Slater's on-stage banter. In one of the most hotly anticipated jazz gigs of 2014, the return to the Ronnie Scott's stage for the seminal and utterly singular big band Loose Tubes – almost a quarter of a century after their valedictory residency in September 1990 – surpassed all expectations. Following hot on the heels of their gig at the Cheltenham Jazz festival on Saturday, the jazz band's radical polystylism – referencing everything from Charles Ives and traditional music to samba and Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Who knew the human spirit needed such bureaucratic care? The celebration of International Jazz Day, founded by UNESCO in 2011, at King’s Place last night was nothing if not well cared-for. Sponsored SGI-UK, an arm of the global Buddhist movement, who were raising funds for UNICEF, proceedings are guided globally by legendary pianist Herbie Hancock, a UNESCO Ambassador for Intercultural Dialogue and Chairman of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. It bore the warning signs of art designed to appease a committee, and that’s a very different thing from making the spirit leap and the heart Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
My preconceived and somewhat misguided idea of the Cabo Verde islands (the official name for Cape Verde these days) was that they were basically a hotter version of the Canaries, with a spare and volcanic landscape that, being a Creole culture in the middle of nowhere, produced a few remarkably wistful singers, most famously the great Cesaria Evora. The islands seem to be a hothouse of tremendous female singers - other purveyors of nostalgic music being the likes of Sara Tavares, Lura and the more cosmopolitan Paris-based Mayra Andrade. On my first proper night in Praia, the capital of Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The sophisticated and exquisitely crafted sound of The Hilliard Ensemble has, over the past four decades, become one of the most distinctive pleasures on the choral scene. One of the several pioneers of the medieval and Renaissance repertoire to emerge in the Seventies, The Hilliards have, nonetheless, made this music their own, their glistening sound offering a more contemporary aesthetic than that of historically-specialist period performances. Named after Elizabethan miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, they share that portraitist’s delicacy, urbanity and intense colouring. Today, they have a Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Drummer Billy Cobham has been an innovative and influential figure since the 1960s across jazz, Latin, funk and the areas of fusion between. He has played with Horace Silver, Miles Davis, Randy and Michael Brecker, and in 1971 was a founder-member of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, widely considered to have been the greatest jazz-rock fusion group of all. The sensitivity and thoroughness with which the drumming was integrated into the Mahavishnu Orchestra ensemble, and Cobham’s management of the new and unbalanced rhythms and structures of that orchestra is usually considered to have Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Pianist Ivo Neame, whose quintet gave a masterclass in the more reflective, concept-driven variety of contemporary jazz at Kings Place last night, is one of the lynchpins of the London scene. As well as leading and composing for this, his own group, he’s also a member of the LOOP Collective, supertrio Phronesis, and Marius Neset’s Golden Xplosion. Playing a mixture of new originals and a couple of pieces from their last album, Yatra, Neame’s quintet demonstrated both the highest collective technique and a winsome sense of wit and whimsy.With an instrumental line-up of piano/accordion, double Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The on-stage collaboration between north-Norwegian ambient maestro Biosphere and his similarly inclined but sonically darker countryman Deathprod was a one off. At Oslo’s Tape to Zero festival, Biosphere and Deathprod bought the you-had-to-be-there moment. The pair had collaborated for a remix project of composer Arne Nordheim in 1998, but this was about new music.The two days weren’t just about this unique partnership. Tape to Zero united Susanna Wallumrød (who performs as Susanna and was formerly half of Susanna & the Magical Orchestra) and off-kilter Dutch singer-songwriter Jessica Read more ...
peter.quinn
There's something about the way in which the musical surfaces of album opener “Urban Control” glitter and sparkle that immediately announces you're listening to a Phronesis recording. By the time Danish bassist Jasper Høiby reaches the end of his first, elegantly constructed, descending phrase, you already sense the impending explosion of motifs and rhythmic energy that it will detonate. And, sure enough, once British pianist Ivo Neame and Swedish drummer Anton Eger are brought into play, the trio's characteristically rich counterpoint takes on an unstoppable momentum.Recorded over Read more ...
Matthew Wright
In the 1960s and early 70s drummer Jack DeJohnette, now 71, was learning his craft with nearly everyone who was anyone, including Coltrane, Monk, Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis. Last night at the Barbican, he was the presiding spirit (if not, technically, leader) in a new multi-generational “supergroup”, the Spring Quartet, alongside Blue Note’s star saxophonist Joe Lovano (61), and two thirtysomethings, pianist Leo Genovese, and the winner of the 2011 best new artist Grammy Esperanza Spalding. It was like watching spring in slow motion: the new shoots are vigorous, but there’s still plenty of Read more ...
Matthew Wright
John Coltrane’s extravagant, trance-like saxophone-playing is often considered the pinnacle of jazz technique, but for Evan Parker, who celebrated his 70th birthday with a concert at Kings Place last night, it was only the starting point. In an immensely distinguished international career, Parker has taken Coltrane’s hard-scrabbling virtuosity into the realms of abstraction, experimenting with split notes and circular breathing, and leaving behind even the barest bones of traditional key changes and melodic variation to create a brave new world of spontaneously improvised sound.If this sounds Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Art, real art, is a denial of the status quo. A tradition that values the role of the individual.” Speaking in Estonia’s capital for the opening of Tallinn Music Week, the Baltic country’s President Toomas Hendrik Ilves is referring to what’s just over his shoulder. Freedom is on his mind.Estonia shares a border with Russia, and Tallinn is just 1000km from Ukraine’s capital Kiev. Taken together, Estonia, Latvia and Belarus share an unbroken border with their former Soviet master. On the Black Sea, Ukraine is on the southern seaboard of that border, and on the Baltic, Estonia is on the Read more ...
Matthew Wright
“The most influential band of the last ten years. Period,” said Jez Nelson, of BBC Radio 3’s Jazz On 3, announcing Polar Bear to the XOYO audience last night. It’s difficult to live up to an introduction like that, especially when the band wanted the audience to focus on their new album, which was launched that night. They gave a typically committed and masterful performance of their well-received new album, In Each And Every One, which drummer, bandleader and composer Seb Rochford introduced with his trademark bashful charm. The playlist followed the order of the album quite Read more ...