It seems a fair bet that the voice was the first instrument, and ever since humans began to sing, music, language, and musical language have been mixed together. They remain hard to disentangle. We turn to music to express what [...]
This was one of those gigs where it all comes together. The enthusiastic buzz of the audience beforehand, the smiling musicians stepping onto the stage and most of all the instant chemistry between them when they start to play. Julian [...]
Brigitte Berman’s documentary ‘Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got’ won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film in 1986 but has not been screened since 1987. It will be shown in a newly restored version – in fact it [...]
Tony Kinsey, who died earlier this month, was a member of the Way Out West collective of musicians in South West London, founded in 2004. Five musicians and friends who are fellow members of the collective – Chris Biscoe, Pete [...]
Sara Colman is part of the team offering a new jazz course for young people in Birmingham. “All the places are fully funded so that there are absolutely no barriers to anyone taking part.” The first edition will be during [...]
This was not just a really special evening of music, it was a happy occasion too. At World Heartbeat in Nine Elms, the music is so close you’re almost in it. No, I’ll correct that: you *are* in it (*) [...]
Effra, Misha Mullov-Abbado’s fourth album as bandleader, is in many ways a love letter to Brixton: the London neighbourhood that he calls his home. So it might seem slightly ironic that the composer and double bassist would play the album’s [...]
The following is jazz journalist Morgan Enos’s interview with saxophonist, arranger, and composer Pureum Jin, baritone saxophonist Lauren Sevian, and saxophonist, flautist, clarinetist, composer, arranger, and educator Erena Terakubo. They are three fourths of The Empress, an all-female saxophone quartet, [...]
If someone stated the opinion “man, woman or child, Ella’s the greatest” it might well be dismissed as outrageous press agent hype. But the words were uttered by Bing Crosby, a man who knew a bit about the art of [...]
Canadian vocalist Gillian Margot and American pianist Geoffrey Keezer are acclaimed both as individuals and as a duo, in music and in life. Geoffrey has been a major figure in New York’s jazz piano scene since 1989, when he became [...]
Arnaud Dolmen’s lively French Caribbean rhythms brought great cheer to his Ladbroke Hall audience on a dreary and drizzly Friday evening. The Guadeloupean drummer’s Adjusting Quartet (with pianist Leonardo Montana, acoustic bassist Samuel F’Hima and tenor saxophonist Francesco Geminiani) performed [...]
Spondance is a 1986 octet performance of a jazz suite written by the pianist Jim Doherty, featuring his close friend Louis Stewart on guitar, plus six Los Angeles musicians: Bobby Shew (trumpet, flugelhorn), Bob Sheppard (alto sax), Gordon Brisker (tenor [...]
Anna B Savage has moved on considerably since last seen at Cafe Oto in June 2015, supporting Jenny Hval. That memorable solo acoustic performance made an impact with the powerful, reverberating quality of her voice and the incision of her [...]
Spanish trumpeter/vocalist Andrea Motis, a star of the European jazz scene, wrote one of the early pieces in Nicky Schrire’s Mothers in Jazz/ Parents in Jazz series in February 2023. Two years on, she reflects further on the themes of [...]
What a pleasure to hear and see this band of top-class musicians so obviously enjoying themselves, playing the music they love with colleagues whom they so clearly respect and want to play with! This was so much more than a [...]
UPDATE 21 Feb: This good news from the organisers of Jazz at the Parakeet: Quoting from their re-named Instagram page: “HI EVERYONE! Since receiving the message from the Parakeet that we couldn’t continue after the end of February, we’ve been [...]
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