Jazz Articles about John Law

John Law's Congregation: Configuration

by Bruce Lindsay
May 11, 2020

John Law's Congregation is a quartet led by British pianist and composer Law and completed by three musicians from the UK jazz scene--James Mainwaring (Roller Trio), Ashley John Long and Billy Weir--who are part of what Brian Morton's sleeve notes calls the “new generation players." Law has been performing since the 1980s, releasing over 40 albums, some solo, others featuring a host of collaborators including Andy Sheppard, Asaf Sirkis and Tim Garland. Configuration is this quartet's first release ...

John Law: The Re-Creations Trilogy

by Jakob Baekgaard
October 7, 2019

John Law is one of the most prominent pianists on the British jazz scene and he is also a distinctive composer. So far, he has focused primarily on building a substantial compositional body of work, culminating in his ambitious Art of Sound tetralogy (33 Jazz, 2007-2009), followed by strong records like Three Leaps of the Gazelle (33 Jazz, 2012) and the double-album These Skies In Which We Rust (33extreme, 2015). However, Law's focus on refining his own ...

John Law: Goldberg

by Jakob Baekgaard
February 18, 2015

J.S. Bach's The Goldberg Variations is one of the most famous works in the literature of the piano and an endless source of inspiration for pianist around the world -and not only classical pianists. Bach's music simply transcends genres and his ability to develop and sculpt variations on a theme remain unsurpassed. It is no coincidence that the legendary saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, himself a master in the art of thematic variation, deeply admired Bach. In the informative ...

John Law / Yuri Goloubev / Asaf Sirkis: Three Leaps of the Gazelle

by Jakob Baekgaard
May 24, 2012

Making changes in a trio can be risky a thing. If there's a special chemistry in a group, the slightest change in the lineup could spoil the magic of the music. For years, pianist John Law has had an effective formula with his Art of Sound Trio, with drummer Asaf Sirkis and bassist Sam Burgess, but Three Leaps of the Gazelle announces a significant change: Burgess is replaced by bassist Yuri Goloubev, a virtuoso musician and an old acquaintance of ...

John Law, Sam Burgess, and Asaf Sirkis at Norwich Arts Centre, UK

by Bruce Lindsay
December 22, 2009

John Law, Sam Burgess, and Asaf Sirkis Norwich Arts Centre Norwich, UK November 30, 2009

The piano trio is a well-established jazz line-up, and its popularity is at something of a high on the British scene. The apparent ubiquity of the format makes it difficult to see how there can be room for originality, then along comes the combination of pianist John Law, bassist Sam Burgess and drummer Asaf Sirkis and such ...

John Law: Deeper into the Music

by Jakob Baekgaard
November 4, 2009

Classical music and jazz are often perceived as two radically different art forms that cannot be merged. Historically, the idea of a so-called “third stream" that is able to combine the language of jazz and classical music into a coherent whole has proved rather difficult to translate into praxis, and yet it is undeniable that a bond, however fragile, exists between the two musics. This was evident from the very beginning, with pianist Scott Joplin's ambition to create a musical ...

John Law / Sam Burgess / Asaf Sirkis: Congregation: The Art of Sound Volume 4

by Jakob Baekgaard
August 13, 2009

In music, the material of the artist is sound. Music is the shaping of sound. It's no coincidence, then, that British pianist John Law has named his ambitious tetralogy The Art of Sound. The final installment, Congregation: The Art of Sound Volume 4, finds Law working with the same trio--bassist Sam Burgess and drummer Asaf Sirkis--as he did on the very first release in the series, The Art of Sound (33 Jazz, 2007).

One of the advantages of ...