jazz
Sebastian Scotney
As the attention-jostling hype becomes ever more unashamed, we get further from the music. The myths and the 'message' get louder, to the point where the question of whether the music itself might actually be worth hearing can become secondary. I've seen music industry people this year happy to treat live music as a "hang" – in one case that stays in the mind, the headline act at a festival – and to chat through it rather than to listen. Young musicians are told that the correct masquerade when they give interviews is to claim that they have drawn all their inspiration from Read more ...
Kathryn Reilly
Before the days of stardom on Jay-Z and Kanye’s scale, before Brooklyn became a millionaire’s playground, Gang Starr were deeply influential in hip hop and became pioneers of jazz rap. However, Guru disassociated himself from long-term partner DJ Premier as far back as 2006 and yet here we are, nine years after his death and 16 years after their last album together listening to the duo in stereo. A long legal battle resulted in some of Guru’s old tapes featuring around 30 unreleased rhymes being given to his family, allowing DJ Premier the opportunity to "retrofit" melodies and samples around Read more ...
joe.muggs
In the eight years since theartsdesk last spoke to Carl Craig, a lot has happened. He moved from his native Detroit for a sojourn in Barcelona (partly for ease of access to his summer DJ residencies in Ibiza), then recently returned. He's reinvented tracks from his back catalogue for orchestra, in a style he dubbed "action and adventure" - certainly more John Williams than Debussy - and has performed them as such around the world. He's successfully built the Detroit Love brand for compilations and club nights via his Planet E label, featuring the city's unsung heroes like Stacey Pullen, Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Leonard Bernstein talked about “the infinite variety of music” and the late maestro would have been thrilled by the variety on display at the Royal Festival Hall where Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi were as exciting and exhilarating as anything I’ve heard.Their performance, part of the EFG London Jazz Festival, lasted two hours but could have gone on for 22, a display of brilliant musicianship and total engagement that was breathtaking, two classically trained performers absolutely in command of their material and sharing their love and knowledge of it. The prior evening Giddens and Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Composer, classical guitarist and ensemble leader Simon Thacker has spent the past decade immersed in distinct musical cultures; from the reinterpretations and reimaginings of the musical traditions of eastern Europe and the Roma people that underpin his Songs of the Roma trio, to his collaborative work with musicians from across the Indian subcontinent under the ever-expanding Svara-Kanti name. Simon Thacker’s Ritmata is a back-to-basics of sorts: the first album from Thacker’s original musical ensemble, Táradh is a collection of mostly original compositions which draw inspiration from Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A few years ago it would have been hard to envisage proto-punk maniac Iggy Pop being a star feature of the EFG London Jazz Festival. His last few albums, though, have been heavily flecked with jazz, and let’s not forget that as far back as The Stooges’ 1970 album Funhouse, free jazz sax squalling was part of the mayhem. Tonight doesn’t veer into that kind of transgressive noisiness but is still far more than just, as the promotion suggests, a run-through of his often elegiac latest album Free.Once his band are onstage, including album co-creator, New York experimentalist Noveller (Sarah Read more ...
peter.quinn
Jazz Voice unfailingly supplies a gigantic sugar-rush of auditory pleasure, and this year’s edition was no exception. Arranged, scored and conducted by the brilliant Guy Barker, the evening’s opener saw rising US vocalist Judi Jackson and the EFG London Jazz Festival Orchestra transform Nirvana’s brooding “Come As You Are” into a swaggering, Vegas-style workout.With a sound firmly rooted in classic Motown and Stax, the US-born, Liverpool-based singer-songwriter Jalen N’Gonda gave the world premiere of his self-penned “Angel Doll”, displaying a marble-smooth tone and pitch-perfect falsetto, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Without further ado, slightly delayed by the sheer volume of releases at this year time of year, here is the latest edition of theartsdesk on Vinyl. You will not find a more extensive monthly report on the goodies newly available on plastic anywhere on the internet. Every conceivable genre is theartsdesk on Vinyl’s game so dive in and get involved!VINYL OF THE MONTHDallas Acid The Spiral Arm (All Saints)What do they put in the water in Austin, Texas? We need to dose the nation with it NOW so that millions of eyes turn upwards from the Daily Mail and look to the stars. Dallas Acid have worked Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A fiddle projects upwards from between Erlend Apneseth’s knees. Seated, he holds another in his right hand facing-off the instruments against each other. He’s plucking both, the pizzicato pitter-patter suggesting water drops on a bell or a koto. On the other side of the stage, guitarist Stephan Meidell is looping the sound, treating it to form a wash akin to that of a waterfall. In between, percussionist Øyvind Hegg-Lunde is behind a drum kit rattling and scraping what looks like a cheese grater attached to some allen keys.The moment passes and the Erlend Apneseth Trio settle back into the Read more ...
Marianka Swain
London’s latest new theatre opens with an appropriately otherworldly Halloween offering: American composer Dave Malloy’s teeming 2014 song cycle, which played at the Edinburgh Festival in 2016. It’s a superb piece for demonstrating the benefits of this intimate, flexible cabaret-esque space – played here in the round, with easy audience interaction and strict maintenance of the kind of atmosphere key to Malloy’s tender piece.Ghost Quartet is formally a double album, with the sensational actor-musician cast (including Zubin Varla, pictured below) introducing each ‘track’ on its four sides. Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Land of Kush are an ambitious 20-piece plus ensemble which features all manner of instruments from strings, horns, piano, guitar, santur, darbouka, oud and synths, as well as multiple vocalists and percussionists. Led by Sam Shalabi of the trippy Dwarfs of East Agouza, as well as numerous other Arabic-leaning Montreal ensembles, they have been fusing jazzy sounds with modern classical music, Arabic Café and distinctly experimental grooves for over a decade. Sand Enigma, however, is the band’s first album since 2013’s hymn to Cairo, The Big Mango, and again has an experimental yet distinctly Read more ...
Liz Thomson
Jeff Goldblum’s 2018 debut, Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra - The Capitol Studios Sessions, was one of the great surprises of last autumn, its infectious, feel-good vibe and self-deprecating retro pastiche as engaging as a favourite Hollywood movie on a grey day. And live at the Cadogan Hall Goldblum was a treat, a real-life Mr Nice Guy who was just so good and so funny.I Shouldn’t Be Telling You This is a far more serious outing, by which I don’t mean dull and boring. Rather high-quality jazz that can stand tall and needs no apology. The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra – Goldblum Read more ...