The Grassroots Jazz Charity currently has a raffle, with seven prizes on offer including: The raffle will close on Monday, 13 January 2025 at 19:27 – or when the last ticket is sold (whichever is sooner) 100% of proceeds go [...]
The sad news of Ustad Zakir Hussain’s passing has left the musical and cultural world in profound shock and sorrow. The son of the late, great Ustad Alla Rakha, Zakir Ji carried forward his father’s legacy with extraordinary brilliance, while [...]
The East London Community Band (ELCB) is a volunteer-run charity that gives musicians of any age, ability or instrument the chance to play music: from jazz, to early music, to classical. To celebrate their 50th anniversary they performed a multi-media [...]
Reissued in the Luminessence audiophile-vinyl series at the same time as Annette Peacock’s An Acrobat’s Heart, to which it forms a kind of companion piece, Amaryllis is a trio recording with Gary Peacock on double bass and Paul Motian on [...]
Strange, sometimes, to be a musician these days. Live long enough, and you may get a call asking you to relate how it felt to play a concert whose recorded ghost is about to emerge from the archives fifty years [...]
The following is jazz journalist Morgan Enos’s recap of pianist, composer, and conductor Arturo O’Farrill’s performance entitled Mundoagua: Celebrating Carla Bley, which took place on 14 December at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Dumbo, Brooklyn. O’Farrill was joined by his Afro [...]
French alto saxophonist Pierrick Pédron came to my attention over a decade ago with strangely brilliant pair of recordings for ACT Music. Kubic’s Monk (2012) found him approaching Thelonious Monk with a piano-less quartet featuring trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, and the [...]
A good friend to UKJN, Jay Visvadeva, has sent us this sad news this morning, after a day in which premature reports of Zakir Hussain’s death had been rife: “TABLA MAESTRO USTAD ZAKIR HUSSAIN HAS LEFT THE STAGE He passed [...]
Lilaila Records, the new record label set up by saxophonists Maria Grand and Camila Nebbia plus pianist Marta Sánchez, is dedicated to work that brings musicians from different backgrounds together. The label’s first release, Altered Visions, features the three founders [...]
Carolin Pook is a German-born violinist, composer, improviser, conductor & drummer from Brooklyn/New York. She creates and conducts music that is tailored to the featured performers and part improvised, part written, while melting those in a seamless way into one [...]
The Bad Plus have been going in one form or another for nearly twenty-five years. When founder member Ethan Iverson was in the group, they arguably reinvented the form of the piano trio with an iconoclastic approach to standards and [...]
Trygve Seim plays tenor and soprano saxophone and Frode Haltli button accordion. It’s a rare combination but one these two players have had plenty of time to hone: Our Time is their second ECM outing as a duo after Yeraz [...]
This wide-ranging programme, curated by composer and musician, Thanos Chrysakis, brought together ten highly versatile musicians, some studying at the Royal Academy of Music, some members of major orchestras, and others who are well advanced in their individual solo careers [...]
Rachida Dati, French Culture Minister has written today: ‘The great Martial Solal has died at the age of 97. He was a legendary pianist and composer, whose name shines in the jazz firmament alongside the likes of Oscar Peterson, Bill [...]
In just a few years, Nod Knowles’ January jazz jamboree in Bath has become a bit of a local institution, as well as being the first notable jazz event of the year anywhere in the country. The programme for the [...]
This is an absolutely outstanding album whose re-issue on vinyl is doubly welcome as it has been out of print as a CD for some time since its release, when it was probably heard by only a few dedicated admirers. [...]
Wow. And double ‘wow’. Tuesday had been a dark and gloomy December day but, after darkness, a scintillating star emerged as Emmet Cohen made his London Wigmore Hall debut. His trio, Cohen on piano, Philip Norris on bass and Kyle [...]
This review by Finn Genockey of Django Bates rounds off our unrivalled coverage of the 2024 EFG London Jazz Festival. It is our fifty-seventh review of the festival. Django Bates’ name carries a peculiar weight in the London jazz scene. [...]
Stormzy said a few years ago that Jacob Collier should “for ever remain genre-less”. On the evidence of this dazzling evening of music there seems no danger of the now 30-year-old multi-instrumentalist/vocalist disappearing down any niche rabbit hole. Hugely energised [...]
Cheltenham Jazz Festival, a cornerstone of the UK music calendar, is gearing up for its 2025 edition with an exciting lineup that promises to captivate audiences from Wednesday, 30 April, to Monday, 5 May. As part of Cheltenham Festivals’ 80th-anniversary [...]
The following is jazz journalist Morgan Enos’s interview with pianist, composer, and arranger Bill O’Connell. His new album, Touch – to be released 17 January via Jojo Records – features bassist Santi Debriano and drummer Billy Hart. Links to purchase [...]
Florian Hoefner was born and raised in Germany, and now lives in Canada. A JUNO Award-winner, he has performed at festivals including Jazz Baltica, ACACIA Jazz Festival, Jazz in Situ in Ecuador and Tremplin Jazz d’Avignon, where his group was [...]
This live recording brings together four of New York’s finest jazz musicians in an intimate and fluid performance combining masterful skills and musicality. It’s a real treat to be in on the action. The Fury is a super-group of top [...]
There is something about the long form. It constantly reminds you that the length of most jazz compositions is an artificial construct, arising from its history and the evolution of music technology. It is also still a relatively rare beast, [...]
A friend of a friend, who has very little English, perfectly summed up this headline performance in the Cambridge Jazz festival thus : “He is a wizard”. With the Amika String quartet to his right and the three other members [...]
I had to check the date online because I was lucky enough to see Sun Ra and the Arkestra in person, at the Brecon Jazz Festival, in 1990, three years before the leader’s death. It was great too, and every [...]
Bringing together the colossal talents of pianist Brad Mehldau, tenor saxophonist Mark Turner and guitarist Peter Bernstein with bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Bill Stewart – MTB is the reconvening of a group of jazz greats from the Criss Cross [...]
After successfully pivoting away from the saxophone and launching a new phase of his career with a bag of full of flutes and an exploratory and spiritual new sound, Shabaka is back with another albeit shorter helping of meditative tracks. [...]
The current, first season of jazz at the Drawing Room After Dark in Brown’s Hotel is slipping away fast. The last night of Week 12 is on Thursday 19 December, featuring Art Themen. That means there are just six more [...]
The opening track of Tullis Rennie‘s Safe Operating Space, Sometime Too Hot, opens with a striking sound, the source of which it is difficult to pin down; it is a dramatic opening that gives us an excellent idea of what [...]
Blue Note has announced that Branford Marsalis is joining the label. The first release, Belonging, will feature his regular quartet with Joey Calderazzo, Eric Revis, and Justin Faulkner. Blue Note also point out that Marsalis’s last appearance on the label [...]
Lilaila Records is a new record label set up by saxophonists Maria Grand and Camila Nebbia plus pianist Marta Sánchez and which is dedicated to work that brings musicians from different backgrounds together . Its first release, Altered Visions, features [...]
