Home » Jazz Articles » Kenny Wheeler
Jazz Articles about Kenny Wheeler
A Supreme Love
by Duncan Heining
Alan Skidmore is one of the finest saxophonists to come out of the United Kingdom, Europe or indeed anywhere. In fact, it was hearing Skidmore's tenor solo on “Have You Heard?" from John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton (Decca, 1966) that encouraged a young Michael Brecker to take up the instrument. Skidmore had also served his apprenticeship with blues singer Alexis Kornerin the sixties and by the end of the decade was equally well-versed in the blues and in the ...
Continue ReadingKenny Wheeler: Gnu High
by Chris May
Trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer Kenny Wheeler's exalted Gnu High, first released in 1976, is one of two albums with which ECM launches its audiophile vinyl reissue series, Luminessence, on April 28, 2023. The Luminessence mission statement is to showcase albums that have “changed perceptions of creative music making." And few would dispute this summation of the first batch of releases (listed below). Some of the albums will be presented in facsimile editions, others--such as Gnu High--in gatefold ...
Continue ReadingJohn Taylor Sextet: Fragment
by Chris May
The not-for-profit Jazz In Britain label is one of the unsung heroes of British jazz. And if it is being sung, apologies, it deserves to be sung louder. While it is fitting that the musicians who make up London's new alternative jazz scene receive a massive shout out, the players who came before them, who paved the way for British jazz's current explosion, tend to get overlooked. Slowly, this is changing, and Jazz In Britain is in ...
Continue ReadingMike Westbrook Concert Band: Marching Song Volumes 1 & 2 Plus Bonus Tracks
by Maurizio Comandini
Mike Westbrook, pianista e soprattutto direttore di orchestra, è nato il 21 marzo del 1936 a High Wycombe, 50 chilometri a nord-ovest di Londra. Dapprima tentato dalla Art School di Plymouth, si dedica poi con decisione alla musica, dalla fine degli anni cinquanta. Nel 1958 forma la sua prima band per la quale gli capita di reclutare il sedicenne John Surman, giovane talento emergente che stava terminando il suo percorso scolastico. Quattro anni dopo Westbrook si sposta a Londra per ...
Continue ReadingSplinters: Inclusivity
by Chris May
Archive label Jazz In Britain comes up with another winner. Inclusivity is a 3 x CD collection of the complete performances of Splinters, an all-star 1972 septet comprising three hard boppers, two radical experimentalists and two in-betweeners. They were tenor saxophonist and flautist Tubby Hayes, alto saxophonist Trevor Watts, trumpeter and flugelhornist Kenny Wheeler, pianist Stan Tracey, bassist Jeff Clyne and drummers Phil Seamen and John Stevens. The band assembled for just two London gigs five months apart. It made ...
Continue ReadingJoe Harriott: Chronology: Live 1968 - 69
by Chris May
One of not-for-profit archive label Jazz In Britain's first releases in early 2020--then only on vinyl, but in summer 2021 reissued on CD—the Jamaican-born alto saxophonist and composer Joe Harriott's Chronology Live 1968—69 is also of interest for the spotlight it throws on another player who moved from his homeland to London in the 1950s, the Canadian-born trumpeter and flugelhornist Kenny Wheeler. The duo are found on all seven tracks, the first five of them quintet recordings from 1968, the ...
Continue ReadingMike Westbrook Concert Band: Marching Song Volumes 1 & 2 Plus Bonus Tracks
by Roger Farbey
It's hardly surprising that Mike Westbrook reigned supreme in the latter quarter of the 1960s and early 70s. His big band was voted top of that category in the late-lamented Melody Maker British jazz polls for 1970 (and the two years either side of that). In the same year, his third album, Marching Song, recorded a year earlier came third in the category “LP Of The Year" (the number one album that year was John McLaughlin's seminal Extrapolation so there ...
Continue Reading
