Jazz Articles about James Owston

About James Owston

Album Review

The Emily Masser Quintet: Songs With My Father

Read "Songs With My Father" reviewed by Neil Duggan

by Neil Duggan
February 7, 2025

Rising vocal talent Emily Masser has already attracted positive attention from British jazz luminaries Claire Martin, Liane Carroll and Clark Tracey. This is no small feat for an artist who has recorded an album while still studying at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She is also helped by having on-tap mentorship and artistic guidance from her father, the highly regarded saxophonist Dean Masser, who joins her on Songs With My Father to add another dimension to her rapidly ...

Album Review

Paul Dunmall Quintet: Yes Tomorrow

Read "Yes Tomorrow" reviewed by John Sharpe

by John Sharpe
September 30, 2022

Veteran British saxophonist Paul Dunmall helms a crew of talented graduates from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire on Yes Tomorrow. It's the second time they have appeared on disc with him in a unit as all four were part of the sextet responsible for Cosmic Dream Projection (FMR, 2021). While renowned as a peerless free improviser, Dunmall also composes, here presenting eight original compositions. Even though the majority incorporate accessible riff-based heads, sometimes evoking the spiritual jazz of his one-time employer ...

Album Review

Xhosa Cole: K(no)w Them, K(no)w Us

Read "K(no)w Them, K(no)w Us" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
August 14, 2021

When tenor saxophonist Xhosa Cole won the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year prize in 2018, Britain was introduced to a young player with formidable technique and a solid grasp of the post-John Coltrane African American tradition. Cole was then little known outside Birmingham, his hometown in England's Midlands, and he had developed independently of London's alternative jazz scene. His classic as opposed to radical aesthetic brought a refreshing vibe. So too did that of saxophonist Alex Clarke, a ...