Jazz Articles about Alec Dankworth

About Alec Dankworth

Album Review

Hull Suite Live was written by Zoe Rahman for World Piano Day 2024 and commissioned by the Hull Jazz Festival. Two statues inspired the suite in the coastal city of Hull, “Voyage" and “Migrants Statue." The two works, which stand on the waterfront, were erected to commemorate the city's history of global migration. The suite explores themes of family, migration and the sea. The work is particularly poignant for Rahman, whose family history mirrors these themes of migration.

Album Review

Shear Brass: Celebrating Sir George Shearing

Read "Celebrating Sir George Shearing" reviewed by Neil Duggan

by Neil Duggan
August 29, 2023

The work of the late George Shearing, or Sir George Shearing OBE to give him his full title, is the subject of the debut album from Shear Brass, a band dedicated to playing new arrangements of his music. They are led by Shearing's great nephew, drummer Carl Gorham. The album, Celebrating Sir George Shearing, features eleven tracks, five of which feature vocals. All of the inventive arrangements, by the trumpeter Jason McDermid, have a level of detail usually reserved for ...

Album Review

Zoe Rahman: Colour of Sound

Read "Colour of Sound" reviewed by Neil Duggan

by Neil Duggan
July 4, 2023

If you have shown your virtuosity on the piano in a variety of live and studio recordings, been recognized as one of the leading lights in contemporary British jazz and won multiple awards, what do you do next? In Zoe Rahman's case, more of the same but expanded and magnified. Most often heard in a trio format, Rahman has assembled seven trusted musicians to create an uplifting album, The Colour of Sound. Perhaps resulting from her background in ...

Album Review

Hummus Crisis: Banks Of The River

Read "Banks Of The River" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
April 16, 2023

For their third album, British organ trio Hummus Crisis--guitarist Kevin M. Armstrong, organist Martin Pickett and drummer Ben Twyford--reconstruct themselves. The trio becomes a quartet with guest Alec Dankworth taking over the bass lines, and Pickett switching from organ to acoustic piano. And, in a smaller tweak, for the first time a standard, Jimmy Van Heusen's “Polka Dots And Moonbeams," is included in the otherwise all-originals set. The reason for bringing Dankworth in was that the trio ...