Jazz Articles about Chris Williams

About Chris Williams

Album Review

Billy Marrows And Grande Familia: The Penelope Album Live

Read "The Penelope Album Live" reviewed by Neil Duggan

by Neil Duggan
April 15, 2025

In 2024 London-based guitarist and composer Billy Marrows formed a 12-piece chamber-jazz ensemble. Together as Billy Marrows and Grande Familia, they released their debut album, Penelope (Self Produced), in memory of Marrows' mother, Penny. This deeply personal project used tunes he had written during her battle with cancer. The band featured Marrows' musical friends and relations playing in various formats: as a 12-piece ensemble, in smaller combinations and Marrows' solo guitar pieces. The project was used to raise funds for ...

Album Review

Billy Marrows and Grande Família: Penelope

by Neil Duggan
April 14, 2024

London-based guitarist and composer Billy Marrows brings us a new 12-piece chamber-jazz ensemble, Grande Família. It is a family affair with members of his extended family and a wider circle of close friends and musical associates making up the group. Their debut album, Penelope, is released in memory of Marrows' mother, Penny. Most of the music was written by Marrows as a surprise for his mother during her battle with cancer. All proceeds go to World Child Cancer, a charity ...

Album Review

Moss Freed / Union Division: Micromotives

Read "Micromotives" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
August 11, 2023

A question any composer for improvisers must face is whether they can create something more worthwhile than what they might come up with if left to themselves. It can be a tough call. For some, such as Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity Orchestra or Peter Brötzmann's Chicago Tentet, the ultimate conclusion was no, while for others such as Anthony Braxton and Barry Guy the answer has been far less clear cut. British guitarist Moss Freed falls somewhere between the two ...

Album Review

Let Spin: Steal The Light

Read "Steal The Light" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
April 25, 2020

Formed in 2014, London's Let Spin is an electric quartet peopled by musicians who emerged around a decade earlier as part of a scene which was rather lazily dubbed “punk jazz" by British music journalists. The music was certainly loud, irreverent and in-your-face, but it was played by musicians who were conservatoire graduates, a demographic not associated with punk in its original knuckle- scraping manifestation. Let Spin's Ruth Goller and Chris Williams were members of two of ...