Home » Jazz Articles » James Maddren
Jazz Articles about James Maddren
Trish Clowes: A View with a Room
by Vincenzo Roggero
My Iris è un quartetto guidato dalla sassofonista inglese Trish Clowes giunto con A View with a Room alla quarta fatica discografica. Nato in tempo di lockdown, con riferimenti, a partire dal titolo, alle criticità provocate dalla pandemia, sviluppato attraverso live streams e pubblicato dalla prestigiosa Greenleaf di Dave Douglas, A View With a Room conferma Clowes come una delle voci più interessanti della effervescente scena britannica, incarnandone il volto gentile e raffinato. La sonorità sia al ...
Continue ReadingKit Downes, Petter Eldh, James Maddren: Vermillion
by Mike Jurkovic
It shouldn't be tough to tell an artist open to alternate creation that their initial ideas behind any work of art—music, novel, portrait, sculpture—missed the intended target but the fall zone yielded some truly ecstatic, celebratory moments. Quite a few of them to be exact. In the promo attending his third album for ECM, classically trained pianist and killer organ scholar Kit Downes reveals that, as these fruitful sessions got underway in May/June 2021 at Auditorio Stelio Molo ...
Continue ReadingIvo Neame: Glimpses of Truth
by Chris May
"The Rise of The Lizard People," the title of the scene-setting opening track on Ivo Neame's Glimpses Of Truth, was prompted by an article Neame read which claimed that 12 million Americans believe that interstellar lizards run the United States. Only 12 million? In a country with a population approaching 332 million, around half of whose voters are idiots and conspiracy theorists, one might imagine that a far greater number would be feeling threatened by shape-shifting reptiles. To be fair, ...
Continue ReadingFerg Ireland Trio: Ferg Ireland Trio
by Chris May
Bassist Ferg Ireland is a young London lion whose recent credits include pianist Ashley Henry's Beautiful Vinyl Hunter (Sony, 2019) and tenor saxophonist Alex Hitchcock's AUB (Edition, 2020), stonking albums both. On his own-name debut album, Ireland is joined by drummer James Maddren, who is probably best known for his work with the piano-less trio led by tenor saxophonist Josephine Davies, beloved of this parish. Completing the trio is alto saxophonist Nathaniel Facey, the lineup's relative elder ...
Continue ReadingJim Rattigan: When
by Chris May
Composer-arrangers as diverse as Gil Evans and Charles Mingus have employed the French horn, but it remains something of a niche instrument in jazz. Why? The same question applies to the almost complete absence of trombones in West African jazz and Afrobeat, and their ubiquity in Brazilian samba. The first convincing explanation in the Comments box below will win a night out with Sidney Powell or Rudy Giuliani. The second such explanation will win two nights. Anyway, Britain's Jim Rattigan ...
Continue ReadingJosephine Davies: How Can We Wake?
by Friedrich Kunzmann
Straight out of Europe's hippest jazz-scene, London-based saxophonist Josephine Davie's third effort with her trio, Satori, offers a collage of melodic meditations that simultaneously defy and conform to their rhythmic and harmonic frames. As All About Jazz's Chris May very fittingly puts it in an extensive conversation with the saxophonist, unlike many of her UK-based contemporaries, Davies' brand of jazz isn't made up of dancefloor grooves or Afro-infused beats, but instead searches for innovation in the Far East, ...
Continue ReadingJosephine Davies: How Can We Wake?
by Chris May
Compared to many of the other premier-league bands on the new London jazz scene, tenor saxophonist and composer Josephine Davies' Satori has attracted relatively little noise. There has been high praise from specialist critics, but little of the social media ballyhoo that has surrounded, for instance, bands led by fellow tenors Nubya Garcia and Binker Golding (who deserve all the praise they get). This may be because, unlike many of its contemporaries, Satori's style, though rhythmically rich, is not infused ...
Continue Reading
