Rosie Frater-Taylor’s London Jazz Festival show brought a rock-star edge into the pristine, new-feeling venue, World Heart Beat Embassy Gardens. The show marked the end in a long series of dates following the release of her most recent album ‘Featherweight’ [...]
There are time at jazz gigs when everything is pefectly aligned, times when they are definitely not, and in this case in the course of the same gig. Start with the best: I had gone to Pizza Express to marvel [...]
Dreamscapes, the dynamic sextet led by guitarist Julien Durand, brought their distinct post-fusion, nu-jazz sound to PizzaExpress Jazz Club as part of the HeadsUp series at this year’s London Jazz Festival. With Durand at the helm, joined by vocalist Lucy-Anne [...]
Cyrus Chestnut concerts are generous aural buffets. With an unfaltering left hand teasing out wondrous harmonies and a mercurial right hand painting pretty improvised melodies, the Baltimore-born maestro draws from a near bottomless well of genres and styles – Black [...]
The critic’s first duty in reviewing a record, book or other artwork is to explain for the reader what the work is and how it might be approached. Her/his second duty is to assess its value in the contexts of [...]
Imagine that you’ve earned world-wide respect and applause as the foremost jazz piano virtuoso of your time. And then you suffer a stroke which affects your left side and, almost fatally for your career, your left hand. Do you quit? [...]
This newly discovered recording finds baritone sax maestro Gerry Mulligan in fine form and amidst good company in a no holds barred set notable for its fast pace and dextrous playing. Mulligan is perhaps best remembered for his sinuous tunes [...]
