Articles by Duncan Heining

Album Review

Mike Westbrook: The Cortège Live At The BBC 1980

Read "The Cortège Live At The BBC 1980" reviewed by Duncan Heining

by Duncan Heining
April 12, 2026

Mike Westbrook turns ninety on 21st March. That would be reason enough to celebrate the man and his astonishing career in music, but add to that the release of the Mike Westbrook Orchestra's The Cortège Live at the BBC 1980 and balloons and bunting would seem in order. The original album is currently missing in action, so this live iteration also restores a major jazz composition to the catalogue. The music's realisation, along with the careful selection by ...

Record Label Profile

Ogun Recordings: Small Is Beautiful

by Duncan Heining
April 5, 2026

In 2023, Ogun Recordings celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, making it the longest living independent British jazz label. It was a huge achievement for an undertaking that was begun somewhat reluctantly by its co-creators ex-pat South African bassist Harry Miller, his partner Hazel and recording engineer Keith Beal and was run out of the Miller's home in North London. As Hazel Miller notes on the label's site, “Harry was working with several bands and a friend had ...

Album Review

Roberto Bonati ParmaFrontiere Orchestra: Si erano vestiti dalla festa

Read "Si erano vestiti dalla festa" reviewed by Duncan Heining

by Duncan Heining
July 15, 2025

"Si erano vestiti dalla festa"--They had dressed up for the party. In August 1922, citizens of Parma barricaded the city against a planned assault by Mussolini's blackshirts. They resisted valiantly and repelled the fascists. No fascist passed that day. A few months later, in October, King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini prime minister. The heroes of Parma were not forgotten and their bravery is embedded in Parma's popular history. Roberto Bonati and his orchestra chose to celebrate their ...

Album Review

Roberto Bonati Chironomic Orchestra: The Gesture Of Sound / The Gesture Of Colour

Read "The Gesture Of Sound / The Gesture Of Colour" reviewed by Duncan Heining

by Duncan Heining
July 14, 2025

Someone once said that writing about music was as illogical as singing about economics. Writers about music inevitably bristle at the suggestion but it might have merit when it comes to improvised music. How do you write about something that can never be recreated, even when recorded and preserved for posterity? We can discuss its method of creation, the sounds made by those who perform it, its colours and textures and our emotional and intellectual responses to it in much ...

AAJ PRO

Under Review: The Not-So-Simple Art Of Book Reviewing

by Duncan Heining
April 25, 2025

Jazz books occupy a tiny sector of the publishing industry, within which any book selling between 500-1000 copies counts as a success. Biographies of major figures might command mid-four figure sales but even then come nowhere near troubling the best-seller tables in the New York Times or Guardian. On All About Jazz, between 900 book reviews appear on the site between 2010-2025. Think about that for a moment. That is around thirty reviews on this major jazz site per year. ...

Book Review

Talking the Groove: Jazz Words from the Morning Star

by Duncan Heining
October 12, 2024

Talking the Groove: Jazz Words from the Morning Star Chris Searle (foreword by Mike Westbrook) 394 pages ISBN: #978-1-9163206-7-3 Jazz in Britain 2024 Talking the Groove collects Chris Searle's more recent reviews, articles and interviews from the British socialist daily paper, the Morning Star, acting as a follow-up to Red Groove from 2013. The sheer span of artists covered in this book is astonishing. From the U.S.A, older statespersons like Anthony Braxton, Archie ...

Profile

Tony Haynes Has Left Town... But What A Legacy He Leaves Behind

by Duncan Heining
October 8, 2024

The death of my friend musician/composer Tony Haynes aged 83 from cancer is a loss both to his wife and children and to the musical communities of East London whom he served with such passion. A jazz enthusiast from his early teens, he studied music at Oxford and Nottingham, while at the latter working simultaneously as musical director at the Nottingham Playhouse. Later at the Liverpool Everyman, he composed scores for plays by left-wing playwrights like John Arden, Adrian Mitchell ...

Album Review

Mike Westbrook: Band of Bands

Read "Band of Bands" reviewed by Duncan Heining

by Duncan Heining
July 23, 2024

For over six decades, composer, bandleader and musician Mike Westbrook has pursued a personal vision of jazz inspired by his hero Duke Ellington. That vision rests on the life-affirming, metamorphic potential at the music's heart. Band of Bands, built upon musical friendships old and more recent, is as fine a set of performances as any in Westbrook's long career. Several things impress immediately here. Firstly, though known primarily for their association with Westbrook, the rhythm section of bassist ...

Album Review

Chris Biscoe: Music Is: Chris Biscoe Plays Mike Westbrook

Read "Music Is: Chris Biscoe Plays Mike Westbrook" reviewed by Duncan Heining

by Duncan Heining
July 24, 2023

Chris Biscoe can trade choruses with the best and melt the heart with the tenderest of ballads. But that is not what makes him special. Live and on record there is always a sense of quiet anticipation as he starts a solo. One knows one is about to hear something new, something different. It is more than his mastery of a range of woodwinds. It is more than the wonderful tone he achieves seemingly effortlessly on each of his instruments--powerful, ...

Extended Analysis

A Supreme Love

by Duncan Heining
July 10, 2023

Alan Skidmore is one of the finest saxophonists to come out of the United Kingdom, Europe or indeed anywhere. In fact, it was hearing Skidmore's tenor solo on “Have You Heard?" from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton (Decca, 1966) that encouraged a young Michael Brecker to take up the instrument. Skidmore had also served his apprenticeship with blues singer Alexis Kornerin the sixties and by the end of the decade was equally well-versed in the blues and in the ...