Jazz Articles about Colin Steele

About Colin Steele

Album Review

Scottish trumpeter and composer Colin Steele returns with his jazz-meets-folk ensemble for another round of boundary-spanning music where technique meets heart and soul. Steele has been a mainstay of Scotland's jazz scene for more than two decades, with recent albums exploring music outside the jazz canon. His interpretations of tunes by Scots emo pop legends The Blue Nile (Marina Records, 2025) drew wide praise, as did Joni (Marina Records, 2020), his collection from the Joni Mitchell songbook. He ...

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Album Review

Colin Steele: Stramash

by Chris May
July 6, 2009

According to Scottish trumpeter Colin Steele's sleeve notes, a life-threatening quantity of whisky was consumed during the composing process for Stramash, an exuberant bacchanal of jazz and Scottish folk music. Steele took himself away to the island of Islay, off the west coast of Scotland, to focus on the writing and to embrace, frequently and enthusiastically, that special mixture of “magic, madness and witchcraft...that only whisky can bring." In a health warning, Steele observes that he would certainly be dead ...