jazz
peter.quinn
Gregory Porter's Blue Note debut provides one of the biggest sugar rushes of auditory pleasure you'll hear this year. Grounded in jazz but heavily seasoned with the blues, gospel and soul, it's a superbly paced album, ranging from the poetic tableaux of ballad “When Love Was King” to the unstoppable, hand clapping moto perpetuo of the title track.There are many other gems amongst the album's 14 tracks, including the singular intimacy of opener “No Love Dying”, the heartfelt plea of “Musical Genocide” and the soulful melodicism of “Movin'”. With a baritone voice that evokes heartbreaking Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Pianist, composer, and band leader Django Bates was so inspired by Charlie Parker as a teenager that he used to whistle his tunes on the train. This led not to abuse, but the acquaintance (at Brixton station) of saxophonist Steve Buckley. Returning to the Proms this week for the first time since his 1987 debut with Loose Tubes, Bates paid homage with a set of mainly Parker adaptations, performed by his trio, Beloved, in a new collaboration with the Swedish Norrbotten Big Band.About half of the programme revisited tracks recorded on last year’s album Confirmation. Bates’s distinctive sound, Read more ...
Serena Kutchinsky
Dalston was the place on Friday night, as the Sun Ra Arkestra put on a trademark display of Afro-jazz excellence in the intimate surrounds of Café Oto. Jazz pioneer Sun Ra might have been dead since 1993, but his influential big band is very much alive and capable of puffing their way through marathon sets.Formed in the mid-1950s by Sun Ra, aka visionary pianist and composer Herman Poole, the Arkestra is currently led by the famed saxophonist Marshall Allen, 89. Frail-looking but authoritative, Allen worked with Sun Ra from 1958 until the latter's death and is often referred to as “the second Read more ...
joe.muggs
When I used to work for the much-missed Face magazine, there was a phrase regularly used, only half in jest: “three things is a trend”. Which means that, unlikely though it might sound, hip hop marching bands are now a trend in leftfield club music. First came the Hot 8 Brass Band, then the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, both from the projects of New Orleans, and both bringing a hip hop and funk sensibility to the generations-old brass tradition of that city – and now come the “peace-lovin' aggro dance” Riot Jazz Brass Band from Manchester, who regularly perform on stage with popular local rap/ Read more ...
peter.quinn
Think of the ingredients you look for in a great jazz record – inspired, exploratory improv, the complete reinvention of standards, ear-catching arrangements, sonorities you've never heard before – and this new big band recording from Mike Gibbs delivers them all. By the bucketload.In a career that's spanned four decades, the 76-year-old composer, arranger and trombonist has worked and recorded with many of the music world's leading lights including Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Joni Mitchell, Peter Gabriel, Kenny Wheeler and Django Bates. This latest addition to the Gibbs discography Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Saint Etienne Present Songs for a Central Park PicnicThis is the perfect compilation for days when heat brings an enervation so overwhelming it’s possible only to bask like a seal flopped on a rock. Compiled by Saint Etienne, Songs for a Central Park Picnic’s 25 tracks capture moods of calm and wistfulness, something to help you take it easy. Yma Sumac’s swinging “Gopher Mambo” and Sammy Davis Jr’s “Bee Bom” are uptempo, but their relaxed groove won’t induce a sweat.The picnic kicks off with the definition of cool. On Vince Guaraldi’s “Softly as in a Morning Sunrise” notes Read more ...
peter.quinn
Squeaking toy pigs. Tea pots. Bicycle pumps. Yes, the dynamic Brazilian composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal was back in town, making a rare appearance at Ronnie Scott's. Described by Miles Davis as “the most impressive musician in the world” - he first gained international recognition by playing on Miles's 1971 album Live-Evil - Pascoal's riotous polystylism incorporates jazz, rock and Brazilian music (MPB, bossa nova, chorinho, forro) to create what he calls musica universal or 'universal music'. However you label it, it's one of the most joyous noises in Read more ...
peter.quinn
The great jazz singers are also the great storytellers. Last night, listening to Cassandra Wilson sing “Wichita Lineman”, that single, devastating couplet - "And I need you more than want you/And I want you for all time" - conjured up an individual's entire life story. Seamlessly traversing genres in fresh and creative ways, performing a set that juxtaposed Cesária Évora's “Angola” with a completely impromptu “A Foggy Day”, the Jackson, Mississippi vocalist, musician, songwriter and producer confirmed her own compelling storytelling gift.When Wilson took to the stage after a scene-setting Read more ...
James Williams
When The Golden Age of Apocalypse, the first LP by Stephen Bruner, the American musician better known as Thundercat, was released in 2011, it was a revelation. Co-produced by Flying Lotus and taking its cues from electronica, prog, pop and funk, its sublime jazz sound united head-bobbing musos, fellow musicians (Bruner counts Dr Dre, Erykah Badu and Odd Future among his fans and collaborators) and critics.To celebrate the release of his equally inspiring follow up, Apocalypse, Bruner and his band took to the stage at XOYO in London’s Shoreditch for a show that was remarkable in both its Read more ...
John Harle
On Christmas Day last year, we lost Richard Rodney Bennett, a composer and performer who bridged the worlds of classical, jazz and film music with a suave nonchalance that came from inner confidence and a belief in hard work. He and I met for lunch in the summer of 2012 at The Fountain Restaurant in Fortnum & Mason. We were to discuss what music we'd like to record to finish Round Midnight, an album we'd started many years ago, and for me to interview him for the launch of Sospiro, a new record label.We had to walk from St James's Square up to Piccadilly – he was ailing so it was hard Read more ...
joe.muggs
The easy thing would have been for Omar to come back trading on nostalgia, made his seventh album a nice smooth jazz-funk set and reminded everyone what made them fall for his biggest hit, "There's Nothing Like This" from 1991. Indeed you might even think that's what he's doing, with a new recording of that song appearing here. The moment you put the album on, though, there is no question at all of a man resting on his laurels.OK, "Simplify" is kind of smooth in its way, but as Omar's voice cruises in on a cloud of harps and strings, it sounds rather a lot more like the rich and strange Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ian Dury: Lord Upminster / Ian Dury & the Music Students: 4,000 Weeks HolidayAs a single, "Spasticus Autisticus" was never going to be an easy sell. Ian Dury's reaction to the United Nation’s declaration of 1981 as the International Year of the Disabled was caustic and confrontational. Witty too. The BBC decided it was in poor taste and gave it no airplay. Yet it featured in the opening ceremony of last year’s Paralympic Games and the BBC broadcast it. Dury would have appreciated the irony."Spasticus Autisticus" was the first single released by Dury after he had left Stiff Records. Read more ...