improvisation
Album: Cécile McLorin Salvant - Ghost SongSaturday, 26 February 2022
When 2020 MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy Award winner Cécile McLorin Salvant previewed some of the material from her forthcoming album to an enraptured audience at Cadogan Hall as part of last year’s EFG London Jazz Festival, you sensed that... Read more... |
Jazz Voice, EFG London Jazz Festival review - from intimate delicacy to stunning virtuositySunday, 14 November 2021
A celebration of that most extraordinary instrument, the human voice, this year’s edition of Jazz Voice – which gladly welcomed back a live audience and a full-strength EFG London Jazz Festival Orchestra – ranged from music of intimate delicacy to... Read more... |
Bill Frisell's Harmony, Cadogan Hall review – superb AmericanaWednesday, 16 October 2019
“Bill Frisell is all about sound and melody and enhancing whatever context he is in.” That quote, which defines both the American guitarist’s gentle and benign nature and his huge level of musicianship, is from Emma Franz, who recently directed and... Read more... |
Edinburgh Fringe 2019 reviews: Deer Woman / Pathetic Fallacy / Blind DateFriday, 09 August 2019
Deer Woman CanadaHub ★★★ You can feel the fury emanating from the stage in Tara Beagan’s incendiary solo play. Fury at the thousands of Indigenous Canadian women and girls who have gone missing in recent decades, abducted... Read more... |
Treatise Project, Goldsmiths review - potent symbols reveal rich music potentialSaturday, 22 June 2019
Treatise by Cornelius Cardew is the defining work of the graphic notation movement. The score, completed in 1967, is made up of 193 landscape pages, each with two empty musical staves running along the bottom, with an array of graphic designs above... Read more... |
Soweto Kinch, Jazz Cafe review - instant karma in CamdenWednesday, 19 June 2019
Camden’s Jazz Cafe reverberated to the sounds of a 50-year-old spiritual jazz classic last night, as saxist and MC Soweto Kinch and his quintet paid fulsome homage to NEA Jazz Master Pharoah Sanders’ consciousness-expanding album, Karma.Recorded in... Read more... |
Claire Martin, Ronnie Scott’s - swinging hard in SohoSaturday, 18 May 2019
While some vocalists build an entire career on a 'one-timbre-fits-all' approach, one of Claire Martin's greatest strengths is the way in which she brings all of the different colours of her voice into play such that each song is allowed to resonate... Read more... |
Kamasi Washington, Brixton Academy review - reaching transcendenceWednesday, 06 March 2019
There’s jazz, and there’s transcendent jazz. Kamasi Washington and his band are the latter. His group — who hail from Los Angeles and have played together since childhood, made waves in 2015 when they released The Epic, a three-hour concept album,... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2018: William Parker - Voices Fall From The SkyWednesday, 26 December 2018
A 3CD set featuring 17 singers, 34 tracks and over three hours of uniquely rewarding music, my Album of the Year, Voices Fall From The Sky by the NYC-based musician, improviser, composer, educator and author William Parker, represented an... Read more... |
Jazzmeia Horn, EFG London Jazz Festival 2018 review - searching for the unexpectedFriday, 23 November 2018
Aside from her incredible time feel, exceptional range and consistently beautiful timbre, what was most impressive about Jazzmeia Horn’s bravura performance at a sold-out Ronnie Scott’s was the sense of joyousness and vitality that coursed through... Read more... |
DVD: WesternFriday, 03 August 2018
Men in a wilderness, uneasy interaction with the locals, a horse… German director Valeska Grisebach’s third feature Western certainly does not lack the staples of genre that her title suggests. But there’s a vulnerable heart to this tale of cross-... Read more... |
CD: Bansangu Orchestra - Bansangu OrchestraMonday, 30 July 2018
This gloriously feel-good album offers irresistibly catchy hooks, a myriad of musical influences handled with an unruffled ease, plus a communicative power that thrills at every turn.Penned by the orchestra's MD and co-founder, multi-instrumentalist... Read more... |
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