Review by Robbie Fearon Birmingham Town Hall 21-05-2017 When Terri Lyne Carrington put the original Mosaic Project (Concord Jazz) together in 2011, it featured a rotating cast of all-star female jazz musicians. The project’s second album from 2015 was in… Read More ›
Review by Robbie Fearon The Spotted Dog, Digbeth, Birmingham 09-05-2017 This was tour date seven out of 24 for bassist Mark Lewandowski’s trio, featuring Liam Noble on the piano and Will Glaser – stepping in for Paul Clarvis – on… Read More ›
In one sense Soweto Kinch has moved perfectly logically from his last project, The Legend Of Mike Smith, to his current one, Nonagram. It’s a natural seven (as in the deadly sins which Smith was working his way through) to… Read More ›
The improvisational power of saxophonist Chris Potter, his astonishing command of his instrument and his seemingly endless ideas when it comes to threading a single continuous line through the music, is easy to find overwhelming in a live situation, as… Read More ›
My favourite tracks on this album keep changing. At the moment it’s Mirrors with its dense structure and perfectly controlled transitions through nine-and-a-half minutes. It feels like a classical piece in the thoroughness of the writing and in the romantic… Read More ›
She drives Boom Tic Boom not just through her drums but in her compositions which, while they may incorporate snatches of klezmer and chamber music counterpoint along with long-lined melodies and loose-limbed rhythms, do so in a really cohesive fashion…. Read More ›
The pair share a church background and the gospel feel is there right from the start, with Block Party, which opens with old-school dropping of needle onto vinyl and has a real party feel along with good-time handclaps Source: LondonJazz:… Read More ›
The lovely thing about this band is its ability to stretch out and create all kinds of emotional colour, passionate drive and diversity of artistic interest from what might be esoteric base materials. Source: LondonJazz: CD REVIEW: Escape Hatch, featuring… Read More ›
Here the energy and fun which had built steadily during the first half erupted not only in a musically circling mass saxophone solo, but a physically circling piano solo. Source: LondonJazz: REVIEW: Duke Ellington’s We Love You Madly at Birmingham… Read More ›
Trish Clowes, with the help of Tom Harrison, held the fifth incarnation of her Emulsion Festival in Birmingham. The name encapsulates the idea of combining different styles of music in to a cohesive whole which nevertheless maintains the integrity of… Read More ›
Armed with a tiny keyboard and a few twiddly knobs (technical term), he explores improvised sounds with, it seems, often as little reference to musical conventions of key, chord progression, melody and harmony as he can manage. Source: LondonJazz: CD… Read More ›
Those who like Abercrombie’s wider emotional range on his albums of 20 years ago might find his more recent work a little too consistently mellow. To my ears the range might be restricted but the subtlety within these more constrained… Read More ›
Guitarist Nguyên Le’s albums have always been richly eclectic affairs Source: LondonJazz: CD REVIEW: Nguyên Le & Ngô Hồng Quang – Hà Nội Duo
Already the arrangements on the recording were beginning to loosen and lengthen as the quartet explored their live malleability. Source: LondonJazz: REVIEW : Laura Jurd’s Dinosaur at the Hare & Hounds, Birmingham (first night of tour)
The trumpeter has always had a soft spot for funk and fusion as well, and in his compositions he cleverly mixes these elements. Read my review of Suspect In You, the debut album from The Nick Dewhurst Band. Source: LondonJazz
These are just a few of the many CDs released in 2016 that thoroughly deserved a review but didn’t get one on this site. Well, not until now, and in brief… Nils Petter Molvaer – Buoyancy (Okeh Records): The trumpeter continues… Read More ›
(Okeh Records) This is subtitled Kurt Elling Sings Christmas, and it’s as classy a set of seasonal songs and arrangements as you would expect from one of the classiest singers in the world. Familiar songs like We Three Kings and… Read More ›
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