Listed: The World and Beyond - London Jazz Festival 2014 | reviews, news & interviews
Listed: The World and Beyond - London Jazz Festival 2014
Listed: The World and Beyond - London Jazz Festival 2014
This year's festival promises further encounters with the strange and new
Jazz. Is there any other term in contemporary culture so widely recognised, yet so difficult to define? Now in its 22nd year, the London Jazz Festival offers an annual global snapshot of the condition of this most disputed of music form, with the usual big names, but more excitingly, many new, young ones, which is what I have focused on here: acts indicative of the scene today.
Wherever you have a tradition, there’s always a temptation to turn it into a dogma, but one of the delights of jazz is the speed of its evolution, morphing before your eyes and ears into a new shape and sound. Surely more of a process than a static genre, jazz always has digested its neighbouring genres, from ragtime in its baby steps to ska, hip-hop and electronica today. This is where the exciting new music is made at, metaphorically (literally, if you’re the Hackney Colliery Band, main picture) the coalface of new music.
From Henri Texier and the circuses of North Africa, via the Bad Plus remaking the cheesiest pop sounds into something delicate and fresh, to Kris Bowers’ versions of classical-cum-electronica, boundaries melt in this music. Since they are recommendations of a kind these are mainly events for which tickets are still available. But move fast.
Abdullah Ibrahim and South Africa 20 Years On – Royal Festival Hall, November 15
A tasteful selection of South African jazzers celebrate their country’s 20 years of democracy, and the role of South African jazz in campaigning for social change. Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim is the star, though the rapidly up-and-coming pianist Bokani Dyer and Gareth Lockrane’s tribute to Bheki Mseleku both look very tempting.
Hackney Colliery Band – The Albany, November 15
While the tradition of colliery bands is a familiar one, the addition of “Hackney” detonates the name with irony. Much more than a hipsterish jape, HCB is an acoustic urban marching band for the 21st Century, blending (or “mining from the musical coalface”, as the band puts it) elements of jazz, funk, ska, and hip-hop. Addictively enjoyable.
Henri Texier – Purcell Room, November 16
Bad Plus – Village Underground, November 17
Kris Bowers – XOYO, November 19
Alice Zawadzki – Royal Albert Hall (Elgar Room), November 19
Movers and Shakers – The Art of the British Jazz Group, Purcell Room, November 20
Henry Cow, Music For Films, News From Babel and Oh Moscow play the music of Lindsay Cooper – Barbican, November 21
Celebrating 75 years of Blue Note Records – Royal Festival Hall, November 22
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