Jazz Articles about Mike Westbrook

About Mike Westbrook

Album Review

Mike Westbrook Live 1972 captures a fleeting snapshot of the transitional group Westbrook assembled in between hisMetropolis era big band and the jazz rock venture Solid Gold Cadillac featuring Phil Minton's irrepressible vocals. This quintet lasted only a few weeks but the line-up boasted Gary Boyle, guitarist of the legendary band Isotope. Also, George Khan on tenor saxophone and drummer Alan Jackson both stalwarts of Westbrook's previous ensembles were present along with newcomer Roger 'Butch' Potter on bass guitar, who ...

Album Review

Mike Westbrook Concert Band: Marching Song Volumes 1 & 2 Plus Bonus Tracks

Read "Marching Song Volumes 1 & 2 Plus Bonus Tracks" reviewed by Roger Farbey

by Roger Farbey
May 31, 2017

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 ...

Year in Review

Il meglio del 2016 secondo Claudio Bonomi

by Claudio Bonomi
December 31, 2016

Una top ten ecumenica quella del 2016 che prende un po' da tutti i generi e da tutti i Paesi. Si decolla da casa nostra, dalle Marche per la precisione, con gli Agorà che tornano alla ribalta con un live avvincente e non scontato che vede l'Area Patrizio Fariselli alle tastiere elettriche, per atterrare in Indonesia con un due album davvero top class firmati dal chitarrista Dewa Budjana e dal tastierista Dwiki Dharmawan che riescono nell'impresa impossibile di mettere d'accordo ...

Album Review

Mike Westbrook: Paris

by Duncan Heining
November 23, 2016

Listen to any number of Mike Westbrook records and you might want to ask, “Why doesn't he take a solo?" Aside from the occasional piano cadenza, Westbrook seems to prefer to let his compositions do the talking, ably aided by trustworthy musical confederates. Westbrook celebrated his 80th birthday in March 2016 and Paris is a perfect way of acknowledging that noble event. Produced and recorded live by Jon Hiseman, the album is a feast for the ears. Hiseman ...

Album Review

Mike Westbrook & Company: A Bigger Show - Live

Read "A Bigger Show - Live" reviewed by Claudio Bonomi

by Claudio Bonomi
June 27, 2016

Lo scorso marzo Mike Westbrook ha compiuto 80 anni, un traguardo festeggiato degnamente con un nuovo doppio album realizzato con la Uncommon Orchestra, ensemble di 21 elementi che include tre vocalist dell'eccezione: l'inseparabile moglie Kate, autrice anche dei testi dell'opera, e due vecchie conoscenze e collaboratori dei Westbrook, Billy Bottle e Martine Waltier. Era dal 2001, dai tempi di Chanson Irresponsable, che il compositore di High Wycombe non se ne usciva con un lavoro per grandi formazioni o ...

Album Review

Mike Westbrook & Company: A Bigger Show - Live

Read "A Bigger Show - Live" reviewed by Duncan Heining

by Duncan Heining
February 19, 2016

For the last few years, pianist-composer Mike Westbrook has been leading a very fine big band down in Devon but this is the first time they have made it on to CD. In fact, this is an expanded ensemble with three vocalists, two bass players, two guitarists and two drummers. The clue is in the title, this truly is A Bigger Show with the emphasis on the word “show." Some people have never got what the Westbrooks have been up ...

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Profile

Mike Westbrook: Art Wolf at 75

by Duncan Heining
November 7, 2011

Close your eyes for a moment. Imagine a jazz composer who began with Ellington and then moved on through Mingus. He soon encompassed rock music, Kurt Weill, Rossini, the traditions of English church music and the pastoralism of Vaughan Williams and Holst, but still found a place in his music for The Beatles, European political cabaret and The Great American Songbook. And what if his inspirations ranged from painters like Paul Nash, Caspar Wolf and J.M.W. Turner to ...