The Crossing, Digbeth, Birmingham UK 27-11-2015 This was the second night of bassist Chris Mapp’s quartet with a guest musician. Maja Ratkje was the first night’s guest, and the Norwegian vocalist/composer/improviser had stayed on to play a first half solo, which… Read More ›
… and we all know what gets generated when that happens in red algae: gonimoblast, right?! That’s what I have been able to suss out, anyway, from an online dictionary and from that jolly useful thing created by Jimmy Wales. Luckily… Read More ›
Various venues, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham UK 18-07-2015 Jazz might be a traditionally late night music but the Legends Festival is trying – bravely, to be sure – it take it into a fresh time of day: 10.30am. This was the… Read More ›
Various venues 26-06-2015 to 01-07-2015 The Südtirol Jazz Festival is based in that part of northern Italy that is right up near the Austrian border in the Dolomite mountains in some of the most stunning scenery in Europe, and is probably the festival in… Read More ›
(Whirlwind Recordings WR4666) Young British tenor player Crowley is in the left channel and has fellow tenorist Tom Challenger in the right, with, elsewhere in the stereo mix, Dan Nicholls on piano and Wurlitzer, Sam Lasserson on double bass and… Read More ›
Bex Burch has an extraordinary story to tell which takes her from banging pots and pans in Yorkshire as a child, to the Guildhall in London to earn a 1st and to play percussion with the Philharmonia, and then to… Read More ›
Birmingham-based bass player Chris Mapp releases new recordings from his band Gonimoblast on Bandcamp today. They go be the collective title Always Darkness Before Dawnn. Gonimoblast boasts an impressive line-up of Chris on bass and electronics, Mark Sanders on drums and percussion,… Read More ›
Photographer Garry Corbett caught pianist Dan Nicholls looking like he is fully “in the zone” during the Chris Gumbley Quintet’s Cannonball Adderley programme at the Jazzlines Free Jazz session last Friday. You can see more of Garry’s Free Jazz (or… Read More ›
Emulsion is the name of a festival taking place over two days from Wednesday at the Village Underground in London. It’s the third Emulsion festival and its curators are composers Trish Clowes and Luke Styles. She is a BBC Radio… Read More ›
Parabola Arts Centre, Cheltenham Jazz Festival 04-05-2014 What I like most about keyboardist Dan Nicholls is the way he has developed a very distinctive, personal style of music that is so adaptable to different contexts and to new influences, many… Read More ›
Birmingham’s fulsome jazz talents will be on show at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival over the next few days. Look out for: Laura Mvula – I think we can still call her ours! Big Top, 8.30pm, Thursday 1 May. Anthony Marsden… Read More ›
CBSO Centre, Birmingham UK 11-04-2014 At one point in this third Jazzlines Fellowship event an image flickered on the screen – Dan was triggering video images during the performance – of what might have been a headphones stall in an African… Read More ›
Tomorrow pianist and composer Dan Nicholls is the next of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation-supported Jazzlines Fellows to get a showcase concert. Nicholls, a Staffordshire boy who studied at Birmingham Conservatoire and now works out of London, has travelled to Africa… Read More ›
Quote from something I* wrote back in 2009 under the title The problem of free jazz: So my point is not that there shouldn’t be free jazz, but, I suppose, should it be quite this good? Quote from Tony Dudley-Evans**… Read More ›
CBSO Centre, Birmingham UK 28-03-2014 This was the second of the Jazzlines Fellowship showcases, revealing what the musicians chosen by the jazz wing of Birmingham’s Town Hall/Symphony Hall producers and supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation or the BBC Performing… Read More ›
Hare And Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham UK 27-03-2014 The room was rammed and the expectations high for this first Birmingham gig in a number of years from Sebastian Rochford’s quintet. And it’s on the back of the first new album… Read More ›
On Friday the second of the Jazzlines Fellowship showcases at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham features the Lluis Mather Nonet. Over the past year saxophonist and composer Lluis has been developing his music for a larger ensemble and his core quartet… Read More ›
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