Articles by Ronan Abayawickrema

The 2000 Guinness Jazz Festival

by Ronan Abayawickrema
March 13, 2004

October 9-31 Cork, Ireland The appalling weather did little to dampen spirits at the 2000 Guinness Cork Jazz Festival, which saw a wide variety of jazz and blues talents performing over the Irish October bank holiday weekend. Over 40,000 people flocked to Ireland's second city to see acts ranging from the headliners appearing at the four principal venues to the vast array of lesser known bands playing in the numerous pubs, clubs, and hotels ...

Elvin Jones

by Ronan Abayawickrema
March 12, 2004

Live at Vicar Street September 2000

Headlining the third ESB Dublin Jazz Week, a sprightly-looking Elvin Jones led his young band in an eclectic, challenging set comprising just four lengthy songs.Garbed in a natty pair of multi-coloured trousers, the 73-year-old drummer chose to strongly feature new material rather than to rely on the past glories of his years in the classic John Coltrane quartet. Opener “It’s Monk”, by pianist Eric Lewis, grabbed the attention with ...

Jean Toussaint's Nazaire: The Street Above the Underground

by Ronan Abayawickrema
November 1, 2000

With The Street Above the Underground London-based saxophonist Jean Toussaint seems to be seeking to emulate T.S.Monk’s recent success in fusing jazz with smooth sounds and pop elements and coming up with something that sounds nothing like Kenny G. Like Monk’s excellent 1999 release Crosstalk, Toussaint’s music has an urbane, polished feel, but has far too much bite to be described as ‘smooth jazz’. Indeed, while Monk updated his sextet’s sound with electronic drums and the occasional synthesizer wash, and ...

Various Artists: Whole Lotta Blues: Songs of Led Zeppelin

by Ronan Abayawickrema
October 1, 2000

Sporting a truly hideous cover, Whole Lotta Blues: Songs of Led Zeppelin is a compilation of songs written or popularized by the British rock band performed by contemporary bluesmen. It's an intriguing concept that should hold particular interest for the many rock fans, including me, who discovered the blues through Led Zeppelin (you know the sort of thing: 'What? Zep didn't write “Whole Lotta Love"? Well, who did?') In fact, the album includes four of the classic blues tunes that ...

The Yuri Honing Trio: Sequel

by Ronan Abayawickrema
June 1, 2000

Like Herbie Hancock's 1995 album New Standard, Sequel features jazz treatments of pop and rock songs. The attractions of this approach - which Dutch outfit The Yuri Honing Trio has taken before, having previously covered tunes by Bjork, Greenday, The Police and Abba - are considerable: It's a way to appeal to people who wouldn't usually listen to jazz, and it injects a much needed transfusion of new blood into the jazz repertoire (let's face it, how many versions of ...

Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabate: Kulanjan

by Ronan Abayawickrema
June 1, 2000

Like the 1997 release Sacred Island, Kulanjan sees Taj Mahal blending the blues with ethnic folk music. While the earlier album explored the music of Hawaii, however, here Taj and the Malian kora player Toumani Diabate seek to reveal the connections between the blues and the music of Western Mali.

And these connections are apparent from the opening cut, a new version of Taj's “Queen Bee". Diabate's kora - plucked, according to the excellent sleeve notes, using a technique similar ...

Jazz Couriers featuring Ronnie Scott and Tubby Hayes: Some of My Best Friends

by Ronan Abayawickrema
April 1, 2000

Although the Jazz Couriers are widely held to be the finest and most influential of British bebop/hard-bop bands, little recorded material by the group has been available in recent years. Add to this the paucity of available solo releases by the two men who led the Couriers, tenor saxophonist and vibraphonist Tubby Hayes and fellow tenor player Ronnie Scott, and you have two good reasons why this reissue from Ember Records, which pairs the band's debut studio session from August ...