George Nelson‘s monthly Moment’s Notice night could be London jazz’s greatest high-wire act. The creator-curator invites five musicians, who may never have played together, perhaps never even met, but whose approaches to music-making are in some way compatible. They soundcheck separately and then, at Amp Studios on the Old Kent Road, a packed audience witnesses a night of spontaneous composition: first a duo, then a trio, then all five. “This is bottom-up improvisation, a leap into the unknown – infinite possibilities, no ceiling, no floor,” says Nelson, a photographer and mover and shaker on the capital’s jazz scene.

Moment’s Notice began in London Fields in 2020, before relocating to Peckham after its second episode. Now 36 shows down, artists featured have included Kae Tempest, Matana Roberts, Moses Boyd, Shabaka Hutchings, Cassie Kinoshi, Soweto Kinch, Ben LaMar Gay, Laura Jurd, Ivo Neame and Judi Jackson.

The fourth season opens on March 27, when Alex Hitchcock, saxes, will join the diverse company of pianist Sultan Stevenson, Palestinian oud master Saied Silbak, tubist Hanna Mbuya and drummer Sam Jones.

The date also marks a new chapter in the life of Moment’s Notice: the first album release. 44:42, out that day on Red Dust, documents one of Nelson’s favourite meetings back in September 2021. Multi-wind player Tamar Osborn, drummer Will Glaser and Kokoroko keyboardist Yohannes Kebede had never played together before, let alone spontaneously composed. Of their collaboration, Nelson says: “That’s everything you want from improvisation, right there. You get the sense that each musician surprised themselves with what they played. The music was incredible – pulsing with polyrhythms, lots of interesting conversations starting, some resolved…” Nelson has recordings of almost every Moment’s Notice night so more albums will follow 44.42, with each titled by the length of the album.

There is nothing random about the bills he puts together. The key to success is matching musicians who share creative DNA rather than surface aesthetics. “You can pique an audience’s interest if you pair Ife Ogunjobi (trumpet) with Rob Luft (guitar). ECM golden boy with young UK Masekela? How’s that gonna work?  Or Angel Bat Dawid with Mark Sanders (photo above) and Jelly Cleaver rather than musicians who come at improv in exactly the same way.

And Nelson has another clear priority: “Much as I enjoy going to improv gigs,” he says, “I do think the UK improv scene has a slightly old boys’ club feel to it, and I don’t think you can say that about Moment’s Notice. For example, 35 of the 36 nights so far have featured at least one woman, some two, some three. This should be the norm.”

Nelson is not interested in the “timeworn improvising” of noiseplay or the comforts of improvisers who have conversed a little too often. One recent striking match-up was veteran New York-born drummer Gene Calderazzo and Philip Achille (“the most impressive harmonica player I’ve heard in my life”). Calderazzo was initially a little nonplussed, says Nelson. “I told him, ‘Trust me on this one.’ I’ll always remember, right at the end of the set he whispered in my ear, ‘Man, that’s a bad motherf****er.’”

Do musicians ever shy from the challenge? “Surrendering control isn’t easy and it isn’t for everyone. Some will be honest enough to say that it’s outside their comfort zone. Most are up for it though. Musicians generally have an appetite for the unknown, and it always feels as though at least a quarter of the audience are musicians.”

Nelson adds: “I invite musicians who I feel have a creative or energetic commonality. It feels exciting and risky but in a way that isn’t truly hazardous for the individual, because I curate with care. I wouldn’t put them in harm’s way or set them up for a fall – just a situation that’s challenging enough that they go in there not entirely sure how and where exactly they’re going to land. I don’t have a clear idea of how it’s going to play out. If I did, I may as well sit at home and listen to my records!”

Moments Notice Season 4 Episode 1 and the ’44:42′ album launch will be at Amp Studios, Old Kent Road, London, SE15 1NL, on 27 March.

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Of course some of the audience heading for EC2 on April 21 may not think of Julian Lage as a jazz musician at all – especially newcomers who’ve only heard this fourth Blue Note album. In the spirit of occasional collaborator Bill Frisell, Lage seems to reject all stylistic boundaries: 13 concise tracks here take in blues, country and Americana of every stripe.

Speak to Me opens with the sun-bleached and Spanish-tinged acoustic guitar of “Hymnal” before a swerve into a stomping rock-blues, “Northern Shuffle”, which Lage proceeds to subvert with playful jazz licks. It’s back to acoustic guitar for “Omission”, the loveliest piece here, with an open-road, wind-in-the-hair feel that recalls early Metheny. Then, on the countrified lament “Serenade”, you’re half expecting Willie Nelson, or similar wizened growler, to pipe up.

There’s more Spanish-tinged artistry on the solo “Myself Around You”, all virtuoso cartwheels and curlicues. On “South Mountain”, lush acoustic guitar chords sound over gentle noiseplay from percussion and woodwind, adding a dose of strange. Throughout the album, core duo or trio performances are joined by, say, sax, vibes or organ, commenting on proceedings. In Joe Henry’s production these extra textures rarely muscle to the foreground but subtly spice the flavours.

For those who know Lage only through energetic live shows with bassist Jorge Roeder and drummer Dave King, the title track will feel more familiar. Over an insistent pulse, Lage solos in a series of lightning runs, choppy chords and the sort of wailing high notes that few axemen can execute without an anguished gurn.

And so the album wends its way through gypsy jazz, bebop and something langourous that could soundtrack a moody French new wave flick (As It Were). Choices are surprising, never jarring, before the pay-off, Nothing Happens Here, a pretty little tune that’s just the hip side of hokey.

OK, Speak to Me is perhaps not perfect – the acoustic forays of tracks four and five do slow the flow. And if you’ve come to hear Dave King (the Bad Plus co-founder) batter skins as exuberantly as he is wont, then the drummer is on a tight leash here. Nonetheless, partly thanks to Henry’s production and the settings he creates for the guitarist to explore, the album is Lage’s most impressive yet.

And, incidentally, Speak to Me comes amid a clutch of fine releases on Blue Note Records – from Joel Ross, Charles Lloyd and more. Lage and his venerable label are on a roll.

Release date is 1 March 2024

BAND: Julian Lage (guitars), Jorge Roeder (bass), Dave King (drums), Kris Davis (piano), Levon Henry (sax), Patrick Warren (keyboards)

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He is, surely, the last man standing from the London club scene of the 1950s, a pioneering era of modern jazz now fading into legend. It was a time when sharply suited adventurers brought the new sound of New York bebop to the smoke-wreathed basements of Soho. Post-war, pre-Beatles, a time remembered in black and white but pulsing with musical colour for the inner-city in-crowd.

Drummer Tony Kinsey led poll-topping small groups as well as sharing stages with such visiting luminaries as Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Oscar Peterson. He was resident bandleader at the fabled Flamingo Club for eight years, and with Tubby Hayes, Joe Harriott, Johnny Dankworth, he was among that elite group who could hold their own with visiting American stars. In the Sixties Kinsey branched out to write and arrange for big band and for strings, with his music appearing in film and TV.

Now aged 96 and a longtime resident of Sunbury-on-Thames, Kinsey will see his life in music celebrated at a concert at the nearby Hampton Hub Club on January 28. A starry big band from the Way Out West jazz collective will include Henry Lowther, Chris Biscoe, Tim Whitehead, Mark Nightingale and Andy Panayi. Central to the evening will be Kinsey’s eight-part Embroidery Suite, a musical portrait of his riverside community. Inspired, as the name suggests, by the locally made Millennium Embroidery, the suite was first performed in 2006. There’ll be a new composition, “For Neil”, and others from earlier chapters of his career, including two or three of his songs. Kinsey wrote 80 for weekly broadcast on Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life TV series with Tim Rice and Herbert Kretzmer as lyricists.

Defying age, Kinsey has kept up his drumming, but recent illness means he can’t be behind the kit in Hampton. As he talks about the programme, Kinsey shares some career memories – like the first time he backed Billie Holiday at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in the mid-fifties. Kinsey recalls her walking on, a tiny figure on the huge stage, to sing The Man I Love: “You could just feel the atmosphere build with her interpretation. But we got halfway through and the microphone went off.

“She was trying to sing without the microphone and all of a sudden a figure came out of the wings in boots and overalls to fix the sound. And there was she singing, ‘Some day the man I love, he’ll come along …’ I burst out laughing and I couldn’t stop because the atmosphere had been so serious. The mood was broken, but anyway she continued on and she got the mood back. She sang beautifully, but she was angry – I don’t blame her.”

Vocalists could be tricky. He recalls a gig with the American singer and actress Pearl Bailey. “She said, ‘Tony when I come on I’m gonna do this blues.’ I said, ‘What tempo?’ She said, ‘Just watch my heel in front of you’ –  which seemed peculiar. After six or so songs she tells me that the tempo on the first song wasn’t quite right. I said, ‘You told me to watch your heel.’ She shouts, ‘Don’t watch my heel man!’” Kinsey laughs. “The idiotic things you have to put up with with singers.”

Accompanying Ella Fitzgerald, though, was a pleasure and he enjoyed a two-week stint with Lena Horne at the London Palladium in 1952. “I remember the bass player and pianist had fantastic rhythm, but what I remember most was the smell of aftershave. We didn’t have aftershave in this country, or it was certainly new to me.”

Kinsey talks about the friendship he built with Paul Gonsalves, the great saxophonist who would drop into the Flamingo when the Ellington band was in town. Of the homegrown musicians, Tubby Hayes was “fantastic … he played in my band and sometimes I played with his quartet.” Kinsey had begun his touring career with the Johnny Dankworth Seven but life on the road in the pre-motorway Britain of 1950 was the opposite of glamorous. “I got fed up with the travelling – no heating on the coach – it was stone cold – and getting home at 3 o’clock in the morning.”

He was there when the band auditioned Cleo Laine, who was married to a roof tiler at the time: “She had her husband with her and I imagine he regretted her ever going to audition – if he’d known she would go on to marry John.

“Her singing stood out straight away. We went over the road to the pub to discuss what we thought. We all thought she was something special – musicianship at its highest.”

Kinsey’s stint at the Flamingo always suited him. He had freedom to play what he wanted, there was never trouble and he could drive home to Sunbury each night.

Eventually changing musical fashions impacted Soho. “It was about my eighth year at the Flamingo and this rock’n’roll came in. I wasn’t annoyed, I just accepted it was going to happen.

“I was packing up my drums one evening and I remember George Fame coming in for the all-nighter, and I thought in his case it was real playing – fantastic – but I never wanted to do that kind of music myself, so I stuck to what we call jazz.”

In the scrapbook that Kinsey’s late wife compiled, he points out a photograph of the original Tony Kinsey band. “All my colleagues in that picture, I hate to say it, are dead.” There’s the saxophonist Don Rendell, and Jimmy Deuchar, trumpet, in their youthful pomp. “All the blowers seem to kick the bucket. It’s terrible really. I miss them all.”

But Kinsey, and his music, live on – as concertgoers will witness later this month.

The Tony Kinsey Big Band at Hampton Hub Club,3 Ashley Rd, Hampton TW12 2JA, 28 January. Start time is 7pm.

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When Tony Kofi was struggling to record what would become an admired set of Thelonious Monk tunes, he found the only way to succeed was to rip up the rulebook – literally.

“One of the first pieces we recorded was “Boo Boo’s Birthday” and when I went to listen back I hated it because it sounded like I was improvising from a textbook. I returned to the recording booth and picked up the music – which I really didn’t need – and I tore it into pieces and threw it in the bin. I just thought, I want to play from the heart.

“And what I did was so much better. I just closed my eyes and played.”

The result was “Plays Monk”, a much-praised debut album by the Tony Kofi Quartet that was awarded album of the year at the BBC Jazz Awards in 2005 and established the Nottingham-born saxophonist as a potent voice in British jazz. The album was a deep-dive into Monk world, which explored the composer’s singular voice but added a contemporary feel. In a career that has seen Kofi mix with such luminaries as Sam Rivers, Andrew Hill, David Murray and Abdullah Ibrahim, the success of that first album has continued to resonate – and now it is being rereleased on its 20^th anniversary. There’s a vinyl (double) album for the first time and a celebratory gig in January at the 606 Club with Kofi’s Monk band: Jonathan Gee, piano; Winston Clifford, drums, and Ben Hazelton, bass.

Today the music of Thelonious Monk – with its angular melodies, knotty harmonies, sly wit and sudden pauses – stands central in the jazz world; he is said to be the most covered jazz composer, after overtaking Duke Ellington. Of course it wasn’t always thus for an eccentric visionary whose “wrong” notes once baffled as often as they charmed. Early in Monk’s career, a week-long showcase at the Village Vanguard in New York is reputed to have attracted no paying punters at all.

The young Kofi was puzzled at first too. “It was a few years after I’d started playing saxophone when I heard Little Rootie Tootie and it just sounded wrong to me. I just wondered, why do I feel it sounds wrong; why is the piano player constantly repeating things? I listened to more of his music but didn’t initially like it.”

However, moving to London and with time on his hands, he was sufficiently intrigued to investigate further. “I thought, just for fun, I’m going to learn all his music, all 70 pieces.” It was Monk’s melodies – linear, angular, unique – that would draw Kofi in. “They called out to me. But it wasn’t just playing the melodies, it was interpreting them … The tunes do not lend themselves well to the saxophone. They’re in odd keys with lots of odd movement so it was a challenge.”

Pianist Jonathan Gee became an accomplice. “I was at the 606 Club one night and Jonathan came down. He said. ‘You’re playing a tune that I’ve been struggling to learn all day.’ That was ‘Trinkle Tinkle’.” Gee would be a key ingredient in the recording, which was made only after five years of study by Kofi and the musicians associated with his Monk Liberation Front.

In the studio the saxophonist had to banish doubt. “I was thinking, you’re playing the music of one of the most difficult composers – and what are people going to think. But then I decided, just shut up and play. And that’s what I did: play with a lot of emotion.” He brought in Orphy Robinson on vibes for ‘Misterioso’; he played ‘Monk’s Mood’ unaccompanied on baritone; ‘Ugly Beauty’ was reimagined with strings. Of the scores (hundreds?) of Monk tributes, few recordings have captured his spirit so credibly.

“At gigs all over the world people say they love that album. When I got the gig with Abdullah Ibrahim he said he loved Monk and respected anyone who could play Monk well.

“You’ve got to come with your A-game to his music – you can’t treat it like a standards gig. You’ve got to be serious.”

What would Kofi ask the great composer if they somehow met (OK, Monk died in 1982)? The saxophonist chuckles. “How did he come up with such great melodies? Was it from his experience of the people around him – like Pannonica [aka the Baroness, his wealthy patron] and his daughter Boo Boo?

“Also on ‘Criss Cross’ – why did he extend the bridge from six bars to eight bars? And where did those amazing cadenzas, like on ‘Monk’s Mood’, come from – or ‘Crepuscule with Nellie’? That melody is absolutely beautiful and with so much history – the Scott Joplin influence.”

Even for Kofi, who knows the music intimately, some aspects of the man who wrote “Misterioso” will remain a mystery.

“Plays Monk” by the Tony Kofi Quartet (Last Music Company) is out now on CD and double LP. The quartet celebrates the rerelease at the 606 Club, London SW10, on 18 January. 606club.co.uk

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Sometimes a musician doesn’t know when he’s got a hit on his hands. Will Todd‘s Mass in Blue – following in the tradition of sacred jazz explored by Duke Ellington and Dave Brubeck – has gone round the world. There have been more than 500 performances, an album and praise from audiences and critics for his bold blend of jazz rhythm and choral harmony.

None of which the composer anticipated when Mass In Blue was premiered to a thinly populated Cambridge Corn Exchange in 2003. Todd recalls: “A very good friend of mine came to the concert, someone who had been to lots of premieres, and I said to him ‘I guarantee this will never be performed again.’ I was absolutely certain.

“It was a mixture of fear – composers are always fearful before the first performance and you’re sort of guarding against failure. I was very pleased with the performance but thought no one’s going to put this on again.” (Todd played the piano part with his wife, Beth Halliday, as the soprano soloist.)

“Having spent my whole career partly with church music and also playing jazz and writing some jazz pieces, I thought the idea that I could mix these up would definitely get a black mark.”

In the first three years there were “probably about four performances by brave souls”, including one at Durham Cathedral, the city where Todd grew up.

“Then suddenly the piece began to gain momentum, especially when we released the recording with the Vasari Singers in 2006.” Rare for a British work in the jazz idiom, America took Todd’s Mass to its heart. The first US performances were in 2008 before the composer played piano in a performance at the Lincoln Center in New York in 2010. “The Americans are in a way more set up for it: a lot of universities and colleges will have a high-quality big band or jazz ensemble, so it makes sense to put that together with their choir. Those resources do exist in the UK but not to the same extent.”

Todd had “a mild fear” of taking his score to the home of jazz, “but I’ve only experienced very enthusiastic American players who really get it… Players like that with a rhythm section part, although notated, the expectation is that they will do stuff with it.

“I’ve played it many, many times [about 200, he thinks] and never played it the same way twice because it will depend on the acoustic, the size of the choir; lots of factors come into play, which is as it should be in a jazz work where you’re making the performance in the moment, not just in the composition beforehand.”

As well as the States, Mass in Blue has been performed in Europe, as far as Ukraine and Russia, Australia too and South America. Next year Todd is off to Taiwan. At the EFG London Jazz Festival on 19 November, Francesca Confortini will be the soprano soloist with the Civil Service Choir; Rob Barron plays the piano with the Tom Green Jazz Orchestra. Todd has heard the Civil Service Choir perform another work of his and was “absolutely thrilled… They’re the perfect kind of choir for this piece because they’ve got great energy and panache and this is a work that wears its heart on its sleeve and they’ll give it a good showing.”

At 53, Todd is a successful and prolific composer – surely the only jazz pianist with four operas to his name. His work has been performed for the late Queen and President Obama. He studied music at Bristol University and now lives in Guildford, Surrey. At Bristol the realms of jazz and classical were kept far apart. “It was a double life – by day I was doing serial-style pieces in the music department then at night playing jazz in clubs and pubs and all sorts. In the late Eighties and Nineties there was some great jazz happening in Bristol.” He loved the challenge of playing tunes called out on the bandstand. Back at the music department, “they were straight down the line, contemporary classical”. He thinks that rigidity has lessened since.

“For a while it led to a schism in my head about what is good composing – the tradition of the western composer versus the improvising musician.”

Both elements fused, though, when he wrote his breakthrough piece. This anniversary year has also brought a series of Come and Sing: Mass in Blue events around Britain where singers come together to work up a performance that day.

“It’s wonderful,” says Todd,” especially when I think back to that gloomy Cambridge prediction. I feel so blessed to have brought it about because as composers we write lots of pieces but very few enter regular repertoire. The reasons behind that are complex – it’s not just how good a piece of music it is. To have something performed as much as this – I don’t take that lightly.”

Celebrating Will Todd / Choral Jazz – Sunday, 19 Nov; St John’s Smith Square, London, produced by JBGB Events

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By any measure, Paul Mottram’s suite for jazz sextet and orchestra is set to be among the most ambitious UK jazz or jazz-related album releases this year. Over 70 minutes and nine sections this deeply melodic work treads a nimble path between jazz improvisation and classical form as moods change from jubilant to restless to reflective. Tim Garland‘s talents on saxophones and bass clarinet take the spotlight, but there are telling contributions too from Jason Rebello, piano, and Jonny Mansfield on vibraphone.

Seven Ages came about because the composer, who has enjoyed a long, successful career writing music for TV and film, wanted to create a concert work for Garland, an old friend from student days at the Guildhall School of Music. “I imagined music where Tim could seamlessly start improvising from a musical backdrop which might be notated, might be improvised,” he says.

It was the saxophonist who suggested using a schematic framework and Mottram eventually settled on Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man speech in As You Like lt. Thus the piece moves through a lullaby-like “Infant” section, playful “Schoolboy”, the angst of “Lover”, the adult concerns of “Soldier” and “Judge”, before “Pantaloon” and the resolution and return to childlike simplicity of “Old Age”.

Although the arc of a life appealed to Mottram, he decided to expand on the Bard. Musically, he says, it made sense to add two preceding sections, “Origins” and “Gestation”. “’Infant’ sounds gentle and didn’t seem like the route into the album I wanted, hence the more abstract, philosophical opening, which is designed to tee you up for the Seven Ages proper.” Moods differ too from Shakespeare: there’s not much “mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms” in Mottram’s altogether happier and more serene take on the early years.

The suite’s own infancy began with a draft of “Gestation” back in 2018. “That was a little bit of a test piece in that I knew Tim was going to be in the work and I knew there was going to be a string orchestra. I wasn’t quite sure how much of a jazz group was going to be around him. I began to realise that with such a big work he couldn’t be the only jazz element, I needed a bigger palette.”

When it came to recording, Mottram’s A-list sextet also included Ralph Salmins on drums, Misha Mullov-Abbado on double bass and Paul Clarvis‘s percussion; each player bringing some of their own personality to the concept. “You write the piece,” says Mottram, “and then the recording process continues the evolution of the composition, almost like excavating. You’re remodelling and going down slightly different avenues.” The strings were recorded in the famous acoustic of studio one at Abbey Road.

The resulting album resolves “unfinished business”, says the composer – his desire to write for his old friend, a player who climbed to the jazz summit as a member of Chick Corea’s band for 17 years.

Mottram recalls the impact of first hearing Garland: “At the Guildhall Tim wasn’t on the jazz course, he was studying classical, and at the beginning of the year wasn’t really playing in any of the jazz groups. Then I saw him as a new guy in the saxophone section; he started soloing and he was just on a completely different level to anyone who was actually on the jazz course.

“When I talked to him I saw the depth of his musical knowledge. It’s no surprise he has been so successful.”

Mottram began his own career orchestrating for films including Chaplin, Shirley Valentine and Rain Man. Later he started writing for radio and TV and his compositions are often sprinkled across an evening’s viewing: The Great British Bake Off, The Apprentice, Doctor Who, QI, The Crown …  The Seven Ages concept appealed to his way of working. “I like composing within parameters. There is nothing more terrifying that the blank canvas; to have a few anchors to tie the music in always helps.”

He doesn’t see the suite as part of any grand Gunter Schuller-esque, third stream tradition of jazz-meets-classical experiments. “That didn’t occur to me. It’s just an expression of how I see my relationship with classical and jazz music. If I wrote an out-and-out classical piece I think I’d probably have a similar harmonic sound-world. As soon as you introduce grooves you invite the possibility of improvisation.

“For me and for Tim, we don’t really see the divisions. There used to be improvising in the classical world but it was lost in the Romantic era. Of course, you hear of Franz Liszt extemporising, but never within a notated composition – Mahler wouldn’t have been impressed.”

Mottram is now exploring the idea of a Seven Ages concert. “I was thinking of a live performance around the time the album comes out but it might be easier after the record is released and hopefully has made a little bit of a splash. It would lend itself possibly to dance, or an audio-visual production – I can see that working.”

Mottram, who for all his talents is not one to blow his own trumpet, smiles and adds: “It’s very easy for a composer to have grandiose ideas above their own station.” He is though delighted with the album. “I was overdue writing some concert music and I think I’ve been able to express the things I wanted to say.”

Seven Ages of Man is released by Ubuntu (CD and digital) on 6 October.

The post Paul Mottram – new album ‘Seven Ages of Man’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

They’re called Howl Quartet and say they’re “a garage band at heart” but anyone expecting some sort of three-chord feral din would be wide of the mark. This double saxophone-led group plays freewheeling acoustic jazz that’s not afraid to take risks but retains a strong melodic core.

On the quartet’s new, second album, Airglow, moods turn from exuberant to reflective: there’s skewed funk (Martello); a nod to Ornette Coleman (Smudge) and a glacial tango vibe (Salt House) as saxophone lines sinuously interweave. We’re closer to Seb Rochford’s Polar Bear than punk.

“We’re very happy with how the recording turned out,” says Dan Smith, alto saxophonist. “The second album takes the writing in a new direction and we’re all really proud of how it sounds.”

In mid-July the band take the music on tour. “We’re looking forward to seeing how the tunes develop,” says Smith. “Live, the mix of composed and improvised is fairly even – maybe tending towards improvised because we do it all off-chart.

“A strong feature of our music is the collaborative nature of the band, which comes from a shared musical experience over a long period.”

The four – Smith, Harry Brunt, tenor saxophone, Pete Komor, bass, and Matt Parkinson, drums – are graduates of either the Royal Welsh College of Music or the Royal Academy. “We’re a co-led band but Harry was probably the instigator,” says Smith. “When we first got together we were playing gigs in London. Then we clicked and decided to create a formal band. Through years of working in a plethora of musical contexts, we noticed a shared appreciation for group interplay and composition.”

First came an EP then a debut album, Life as We See It, made with funding from the Help Musicians charity. Smith cites two bands as inspiration for the sonic space they hoped to explore on the first album: the Bad Plus and the Claudia Quintet – groups who share saxophonist Chris Speed and who travel between the avant-garde and the easily accessible.

In a band democracy all the members of Howl write. “Our four individual compositional voices have informed each other’s over the years, and although we write in different ways, the group dynamic ends up shaping all the compositions to a degree.”

Smith first picked up the saxophone towards the end of primary school and a love of jazz developed in his teen years. “My entry was through the RH Factor [trumpeter Roy Hargrove], going out in my mate’s car, we’d be absolutely blasting that music.”

As Howl Quartet found their feet, Smith says: “we developed a shared fascination with two horn-led groups, working on the idea of ‘the line’ in jazz and classical music and incorporating contrapuntal and melodic approaches learned from Bach. Certainly this was important to the early Howl days for me and Harry.”

As is the way in the jazz life, all the members have other projects but Howl Quartet has its own momentum. “We have new tunes that we’ll be playing on tour,” says Smith. “We’d like to put a third album out and further refine the sound created on this album.” Streaming success in Germany suggests potential there too.

So are Howl Quartet really still a garage band? If so, they seem more of a Tesla than a Trabant. Smith thinks the spirit is there. “It still feels a bit like that as now we don’t live in the same place in London.” (Smith is back in his native Hertfordshire and Pete Komor is in Birmingham). “We’re not seeing each other as often as we did. So even though it might be a rehearsal in someone’s house, it does still feel like we’re meeting up in the garage on Sunday afternoon. It has this feel that I quite like – the music can get quite rowdy. I love it.”

Airglow is released on 14 July 2023.
The launch tour runs July 17-21, starting at Ashburton Arts Centre, Devon on 17 July and includes Pizza Express Jazz Club, London W1, on 19 July – BOOKINGS

LAUNCH TOUR DATES

17.07.23 Ashburton Arts Centre
18.07.23 Southampton Jazz Club
19.07.23 Pizza Express Jazz Club, Soho
21.07.23 Bear Club, Luton

And later….
03.10.23 Fringe In The Round, Bristol
04.10.23 Flute and Tankard, Cardiff
24.10.23 Fougou Jazz, Exeter

The post Howl Quartet – new album ‘Airglow’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

It’s a safe bet that an album by Uriel Herman will be the only one this year in which Frédéric Chopin sits side by side with Kurt Cobain. As well as the Chopin homage and Polly by Nirvana, the pianist’s imagination is inspired by Antonio Carlos Jobim, a Hebrew lullaby and – closer to jazz’s home turf – an elegant take on Nature Boy.

Some people like to ring-fence the sound of jazz as the Great American Songbook, Satchmo and, well, little else. Not Uriel Herman. Different Eyes, his third album as leader, reflects a wider vision – with Middle Eastern textures, rock and classical music all contributing. Like other Israeli artists, this is jazz as bubbling melting pot. The sound of the Uriel Herman quartet is warm-blooded and melodic but with moments of daring and lots of space for spontaneity. Ten years of live work have brought success in Asia, Brazil and Europe. This hardened road warrior plays his first UK date at Ronnie Scott’s in September; then in one week in October he has gigs in Lithuania and Poland before starting a big Brazilian tour.

Uriel’s eclectic approach reflects his time at the Jerusalem Music Academy. “I was an odd figure in the classical world because I liked to improvise.” His composition teacher, though, was encouraging – believing that the player should become part of the piece. Uriel regrets the loss of improvisation in the classical tradition – “which is one reason why classical music is a sound more for museums. That’s sad because Mozart is still a god for me.”

Rock music loomed large from early days: “Jimi Hendrix, Radiohead – those figures have always been with me … On my first solo album we did this version of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit [a wild reimagining that takes Cobain to the souk and back]. I think that helped me get better offers for touring and festivals.” And like Nirvana, Uriel has also refashioned David Bowie’s The Man Who Sold the World.

With all the travelling from his Tel Aviv home, Uriel regularly finds new inspirations: “At the moment I’m really into Turkish music – a different and interesting way of looking at music. Or I have a project in Spain which made me go into flamenco.

“For me, music is a language and I’m always trying to add to my vocabulary.”

Conceiving an album is different from the commissions he sometimes receives: “With Different Eyes I was just going with my heart. What I realised when I finished is that in a way it was about my childhood. I became a parent three years ago and it made me reflect on my own childhood.”

The opening track is a tender duet with the trumpeter Itamar Borochov entitled Jerusalem. It’s the city where Uriel and his wife both grew up. “For me it’s one of the most magical – and hardest – places to live. I could never live there again because of the intensity – the holiness and the hate.”

Like the all the tunes, Jerusalem came together swiftly. “When you work on an album it can be hard but this was all done in one or two takes.” The track list takes some virtuoso turns: MJ, celebrating  basketball legend Michael Jordan, a childhood hero, ducks and weaves in 23/8 time (Jordan’s jersey number in his prime was 23). The record bows out though, as it began, in gentle fashion with Yakinton, a pretty take on an ancient melody dedicated to his young son. “Words are limited but music is not. When you say ‘I love you’ to your wife or your son or someone else those words are trying to convey a feeling, but music does it much better.”

In concert – in true jazz spirit – the tunes begin to assume a life of their own. “In a good show 90 per cent is improvised; in a good show you forget about form. Maybe the first one or two shows of a tour are more structured but by the third night it could be 100 per cent improvised. I really love that.

“The reason music is special is because it is happening in real time – and then it’s gone.”

Different Eyes is released by Ubuntu on June 30 and is available from Proper ; The quartet play Ronnie Scott’s on September 19 with special guest Cuban trumpet star Yelfris Valdes – BOOKINGS

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As a promising young guitarist growing up in Tel Aviv, Gur Liraz heard a sound that he loved but couldn’t emulate. The classic American organ trio – Hammond B3, drums and a guitarist swinging between blues and bop – was out of reach.

“I always wanted to play in an organ trio,” says Gur. “I grew up listening to those guitarists – Wes Montgomery, Grant Green, Kenny Burrell – but in Israel not that many people even played the organ. To find an original B3 in Israel was difficult. So it just never happened.”

It would be almost a couple of decades later, and nearly 2,000 miles away, before Gur could finally make his organ trio debut. Gur’s album, Squiggles, released by Ubuntu in May, features nine tunes, seven by the guitarist and two by his newfound organist Tal Bashai. From melodic and reflective to hard-grooving, Squiggles stylishly celebrates a genre that was once the most popular in jazz.

It was during lockdown that Gur, now based in Berlin, finally met his Hammond player and found the hours to work up his composing skills. (Time to think turns out to have been the silver lining for a good number of creative artists faced with a Covid-decimated diary.)

“When I met Tal it was a question of learning to play alongside the organ. Because it’s a different experience from other instruments – when you play with an organ it shines a spotlight on every note you choose.

“I find I play more carefully when I play with the organ. The harmonic experience is totally different, there’s so much going on behind you – and it can sound incredible.”

Gur’s musical journey began when he started on guitar aged nine. He majored in jazz at the Thelma Yellin High School – renowned for the players it has nurtured – and studied for four years with a “wonderful” guitarist,  Ofer Ganor. From high school he was busy on the Tel Aviv jazz scene. “I was playing cafes and restaurants and making OK money. It was fun and I just never stopped.”  But eventually Gur decided he should sample jazz in its country of origin and during an eight-month stay in New York took lessons from guitarist Peter Bernstein, a fixture on the scene whose easy fluency Gur admired. “He’s a big advocate of tradition and checking out the masters. He’ll always tell you to transcribe Bird and Coltrane and Wes Montgomery – and go to the fathers of the music, not the sons.

“I listen to everybody but I’m very old school in my tastes. I like the clean guitar sound. Today that’s pretty rare to find.” There was a time growing up when he listened almost exclusively to Wes Montgomery, he says.

Gur’s next move, in 2013, was to Berlin – initially to study literature at the Free University. “I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to keep being a jazz musician at the time. But when I finished my degree and started to do more music it proved an interesting place to be. It wasn’t New York, but with the jazz institute there, it was coming up and there were enough musicians I could play with and be inspired by.”

During lockdown Gur became interested in investigating the links between Jewish music and jazz – as have done players from Avishai Cohen, the bassist, to John Zorn in different ways. “With ‘Squiggles’ I’m not sure if that came out in the final album. A lot of the ‘falafel jazz’ didn’t make it into the recording.” (Falafel jazz being a term Israeli musicians use for jazz with a strong Middle Eastern feel and flavour.)

Gur has also recorded and gigged with German singer Amanda Becker; his twin brother, Gal, is a saxophonist who also lives in Berlin and they have played together. But it’s as a guitarist-bandleader that Gur’s ambitions currently lie. While German dates to promote the album are planned, the hope is to bring the organ trio to London sometime. “On stage the music follows the classic jazz form. We play a chorus of the melody, which sometimes I play more fluidly, sometimes I stick to exactly how I wrote it. That is followed by choruses of improvisation and every night is completely different. It can be good, it can be amazing!”

Squiggles is released by Ubuntu Music on May 19.

The post Gur Liraz – debut album as leader, ‘Squiggles’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

• 16 April: Big band (and special guests) at Pizza Express Dean Street
• 13 May: Ruth Fisher’s Prosecco Jazz Brunch at the Watford Jazz Festival

The hidden man of music is emerging from the shadows. John Altman‘s career can read like a tour of the cultural highlights of the past 50 years: his film work includes James Bond and Titanic; he has collaborated with everyone from Chet Baker to Amy Winehouse, Rod Stewart to Björk. For Van Morrison he orchestrated “Moondance”, and for Monty Python, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”. All of this without troubling the headline writers of the music press.

But now the London-born Altman has decided it’s time to edge a little closer to the spotlight – if only, he jokes, so that people stop confusing him with the other John Altman (that’s Nasty Nick from EastEnders, and yes, they’ve done events together). “It’s funny,” he says, “I’ve been very happy just being in the shadows but there comes a time when I want to do something and people don’t think it’s the other John Altman.”

Last year he published “Hidden Man: My Many Musical Lives”, whose myriad tales include a cutting room encounter with Charlie Chaplin, a 21^st birthday party at which Muddy Waters sang, and his stint as a London tour guide for Bob Marley.

In Britain, he says, he tends to be pigeonholed as a composer and arranger, whereas in LA, where Altman long had a base and regularly gigged, he’s more recognised as a band-leader. Playing live in London may alter that view with a big-band show at Pizza Express in Soho on 16 April.

“We had a dummy run of the new presentation in Leytonstone [East Side Jazz Club] which went really well. My idea was to create a show that looked at every aspect of my career – jazz, composing, commercials and arranging – bringing them all together. The show is a mix of jazz standards that I’ve arranged, original jazz numbers and then hit records that I’ve worked on. So at the moment there are three male-sung and three female-sung hits. I’ve included Moondance; Kissing a Fool that I arranged for George Michael; and Always Look on the Bright Side from “Life of Brian”.”

That last one sounds like a showstopper. Altman laughs. “I toyed with the idea of making it a samba and then I thought everyone knows it in the movie arrangement so why don’t I just adapt that. If I get frowns from the jazz purists so be it.”

For the female vocals he includes his arrangement of “That Ole Devil Called Love” for Alison Moyet and “Get Happy”, as sung by Jane Horrocks in “Little Voice”. There’s also “It’s Oh So Quiet”, which as readers of Altman’s book will know, was recorded in one take after Björk turned up only ten minutes before the recording session was due to end. Singing at the Soho gig will be Rebecca Poole and Shane Hampsheir. “The idea is to have a pool of vocalists – like big band musicians – to draw on when shows come up,” he says.

Then on 13 May, at the Watford Jazz Festival, Altman appears with slimmed down forces. He’s the guest for Ruth Fisher‘s Prosecco Jazz Brunch. Altman will be playing saxophone with his quartet featuring Andrew McCormack, piano, Flo Moore, bass, and Chris Higginbottom, drums. He’ll also be chatting with the Jazz FM presenter.

“It will be tunes that I’ve written and standards – some of them fairly obscure – that I’ve picked up over the years. They’re often tunes that could be famous but Charlie Parker never recorded them. There’s a story behind all of them, whether they’re long involved stories or short pithy ones.”

For Altman, it’s been a life steeped in music coming from a family well blessed with the musical gene. Four of his uncles were band-leaders and he grew up in a London home where stars – Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins – were family friends. “I remember Jack Benny sitting on the sofa. He used to put black boot polish on his bald patch and it would come off on the antimacassars. My mum would go mad.”

So, as well as music, expect a fund of such tales at Altman’s live shows, from the age of antimacassars to Amy Winehouse.

The post John Altman first appeared on UK Jazz News.