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Jazz Articles about Harry Beckett
Graham Collier: Down Another Road @ Stockholm Jazz Days ’69
by Chris May
In 1969, when the composer and bassist Graham Collier took his sextet to Stockholm Jazz Days to give a live performance of their album Down Another Road (Fontana, 1969), the presence of a British band onstage at a European jazz festival was exceptional. The idea that British musicians would one day have their names on the marquee at US festivals, as Sons of Kemet, The Comet Is Coming and Nubya Garcia have in the 2020s, would have been regarded as ...
read moreMike Gibbs: Revisiting Tanglewood 63: The Early Tapes
by Chris May
With British jazz in 2021 in better shape than ever before, record companies are being emboldened to revisit their tape libraries and reissue historic but long deleted albums. At the same time, recently formed specialist labels such as Jazz In Britain are making available club and radio broadcast recordings which have never been released before. The Rhodesian-born, Berklee-schooled orchestral-jazz composer Michael Gibbs, a truly iconic figure who continues to inspire young British musicians, is receiving attention on both fronts.
read moreIan Carr: Solar Session
by Chris May
One of the first European jazz bandleaders to embrace synthesizers, bass guitars and other electric instruments, trumpeter, composer and author Ian Carr forged a singularly British style of jazz-rock with his band Nucleus, which he formed in 1969 and with which he recorded a dozen albums through the 1970s. Carr had previously paid extensive dues in acoustic jazz, most notably as co-leader with saxophonist Don Rendell of the highly regarded, culturally inclusive Rendell-Carr Quintet from 1964 to 1969.
read moreHarry Beckett: Joy Unlimited
by Chris May
The Barbados-born trumpeter Harry Beckett moved to Britain when he was 19. His first known recording session came in 1961 alongside Charles Mingus. This happened during the London sessions for the Tubby Hayes album All Night Long (Fontana, 1962), which was chronicled in the 2020 All About Jazz article Jazz & Film: An Alternative Top 20 Soundtrack Albums. To debut with Mingus was an auspicious beginning and Beckett never looked back. Seemingly loved by everyone who met ...
read moreHarry Beckett: Still Happy
by Bruce Lindsay
Barbados-born Harry Beckett was known across the jazz world, respected as a major player on the UK scene for many years, winning the Melody Maker Trumpeter of the Year award in 1972 and recording or performing with a host of musicians including Louis Moholo, John Dankworth and John Surman. Like many jazz players he was in demand as a session player across genres--he's on Jack Bruce's magnificent Songs For A Tailor (Polydor, 1969), as well as albums by The Faces, ...
read moreHarry Beckett: The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett
by AAJ Italy Staff
La tromba di Harry Beckett, musicista nato nel 1935 e d'origini caraibiche, è una delle più note del jazz britannico degli anni Sessanta e Settanta. Le piste musicali da lui battute hanno spesso lasciato intendere una concezione del jazz molto allargata. Quella di un grande tetto fatto apposta per far incontrare suoni dal mondo. L'indole caraibica, le suggestioni americane, la Giamaica riletta da una prospettiva inglese. The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett è un disco che non cambia direzione e ...
read moreChris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath: Eclipse at Dawn
by AAJ Italy Staff
Si può solo intuire quale poteva essere l’impatto sul pubblico di una esibizione dal vivo della Brotherhood of Breath, la formazione allestita agli inizi degli anni Settanta da Chris McGregor sulle ceneri degli storici Blue Notes. Si può solo immaginare, perché il valore musicale e di testimonianza storica di Eclipse at Dawn, ad opera della meritoria Cuneiform Records, non è purtroppo supportato da un adeguata qualità sonora. I suoni poco brillanti e affossati, le dinamiche compresse, la timbrica ovattata costringono ...
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