New music
peter.quinn
Now in its eighteenth year, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra (SNJO) demonstrated last night why it's considered one of Europe’s finest big bands. Brilliantly directed by tenor sax player Tommy Smith and featuring the great Brian Kellock on piano, the band performed music from their acclaimed In The Spirit of Duke released earlier this year. The recording not only features some of the greatest music written in the last century but also captures the Ellington Orchestra sound down to the tiniest detail.Ellington’s suites have long been part of SNJO's repertory programmes, so the Duke's music Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Distinguished jazz guitarists Philip Catherine and John Etheridge made (a little bit of) history at The Vortex last night, playing together for the first time. In a perfect balance of youth and experience, the evening also saw the launch of a debut album, Road Story, by the Igor Gehenot Trio (like Catherine, recorded by Brussels-based Igloo Records), with original compositions by the precocious 23 year-old pianist Gehenot. The evening was masterminded by Igloo and The Vortex; both deserve credit for an enterprising and worthwhile venture. Etheridge’s musical diversity and grasp of rock Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Like his sometime nemesis Robbie Williams it’s all too easy to dismiss Gary Barlow as lame mainstream tosh. In fact, that’s not such a bad idea. Let’s do that. Job done.Those who wish for more might like to check the next pageAlternatively…Like his sometime nemesis Robbie Williams it’s all too easy to dismiss Gary Barlow as lame mainstream tosh. This is especially the case if you were male and young in the Nineties for then you’ll have borne the Take That-mania of hormone-addled female peers (as well as the crappy disco-pop that accompanied it). Nowadays Barlow’s media presence is ubiquitous Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
At first it looked like a joke. But, as each muscle spasm, set off by an electric shock, did appear to produce a pained expression in the performer and a subsequent note, one slowly had to accept that these four string quartet players were indeed being electrocuted into performance. The Wigmore Hall, it wasn’t. Sonica, it certainly was.This was the second year of the four-day festival that, each November, takes over Glasgow's galleries, theatres, warehouses and shop windows and runs amok, stretching the meaning of music to its artistic, intellectual and technological limits. Cross-pollination Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Even Joni Mitchell wasn’t spared an affectionate ribbing, as jazz singer Ian Shaw continued his Joni at 70 Tour with a combination of sincerity and satire, both red-raw, in the Elgar Room last night. Stripping pretensions compulsively, Shaw gave an engrossingly witty performance of the work of the great singer once known, we learnt, as “Moany Mitchell” in the young Shaw’s household.Mitchell’s lover James Taylor’s nasal delivery was ruthlessly sent up, as was Sir Elton John, on whose shiny red piano, acquired for the Elgar Room in 2010, he was playing. (The lyrics of Shaw’s parody of “Candle Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Rebecca Ferguson’s first album, Heaven, blew in like a summer breeze in the freezing winter of 2011. What made the Liverpudlian’s debut stand out was not so much the quality of her voice – although it was undeniably big and infectious – but rather that, as an X Factor alumnus, she actually seemed to have something worthwhile to say. As such, it gives me no pleasure to say that the follow up, Freedom, sounds insipid; more Magic FM than, well, magic. Previously, Ferguson had succeeded in conveying personal struggles through bright, muscular soul melodies. This time around, Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
For someone who has built a reputation for limpid, introspective piano playing, last night was a new adventure both for Brad Mehldau and his (mainly) supportive audience. He has covered fellow introvert Nick Drake’s songs, and he is a master of thoughtful, expressive piano. So when we hear he's doing a show that references drum ’n’ bass and 1970s funk in a duo with a drummer with synths and Fender Rhodes, a certain apprehension is in order. It could have been like all those opera singers who suddenly discover jazz and usually make a complete hash of it.In fact, the first few numbers were Read more ...
Matthew Wright
With the bell of his Dizzy Gillespie-style “bent” trumpet pointing skywards like a rocket launcher, Scott dominated the stage at Ronnie Scott’s last night, every bit the iconic jazz trumpeter. Instead of the clearly-articulated, pure-toned pulse of a Louis or a Dizzy, Scott’s trumpet voice is smudgy, occasionally even grimy, with chromatic bursts of notes, played so fast you can’t always hear the join.Yet at the right time, he has a tone as straightforwardly piercing as any of the twenties greats. Both as a player and composer, he straddles tradition and modernity, believing he can “stretch” Read more ...
joe.muggs
The past year or two have seen a staggering return to popularity of house and techno music in the UK. For the first time since the mid-1990s, records which have grown steadily through club play over many months are breaking through into the charts on a regular basis – but just as exciting and significant are those records that remain resolutely underground. Because it's there that you start to see the real reason for the longevity of these sounds – both well over a quarter of a century old.Take Livity Sound, for example, a trio of young Bristol-based producers – Pev, Kowton and Asusu – with Read more ...
Matthew Wright
What does a stuffed penguin have in common with the religious concept of transcendence? Even less than you might think, it emerged last night, during one of the London Jazz Festival’s less well matched programmes, featuring one trio named after each item. Gogo Penguin, an amiable and talented group, were outgunned by the intellectually and spiritually sensational vision of New York drummer Jaimeo Brown’s improvised setting of sampled spirituals from Gee’s Bend, Alabama, the Manchester band’s light-heartedness in danger of seeming simply lightweight. Gogo Penguin has risen quickly Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The expected curveball came an hour in with a completely unfamiliar 14-minute song. Based around a pulsing bass riff, it was a deconstructed merger of The Rolling Stones’s “Paint it Black” and the Spanish side of Love’s Da Capo. A large contingent of the audience used it as handy toilet break.Television were never going to play what amounted to the equivalent of a straight greatest hits set, although they came pretty close last night at the Roundhouse. There was no “Foxhole”, but “Elevation”, “Guiding Light, “Little Johnny Jewel”, “Prove it”, “Torn Curtain” and “See no Evil” were aired. The Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
There’s something in the vocal delivery that calls for comparison to countrywoman Leslie Feist - a subtlety, an unreal-ness - but on her third, self-titled album Canadian songwriter Hannah Georgas has honed a sound of her own. What could easily have been your run-of-the-mill, heart-on-sleeve singer-songwriter material spent a little time in the studio with Graham Walsh of Toronto-based electronica act Holy Fuck and came out with its soul intact, but with just enough bite to make these songs stand out.I confess to writing Georgas off a little last year, while she was opening for, and Read more ...