Jazz Articles about Mike Westbrook

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 ...

Mike Westbrook & Company: A Bigger Show - Live

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 ...

Mike Westbrook & Company: A Bigger Show - Live

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 ...

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 ...

Mike Westbrook Orchestra: The Cortege

by Chris May
April 29, 2011

At its richest, pianist/composer Mike Westbrook's work is to jazz what grand opera, in the classical world, is to chamber music. The Cortege is Westbrook at his richest, leading a 17-piece orchestra through an ambitious and brilliantly realized suite, loosely themed around the idea of a funeral procession and its after-party. Thirty years after its first release on Original Records, The Cortege remains one of finest achievements of British orchestral jazz, and has been reissued as a two-CD set to ...

Mike Westbrook: Westbrook-Rossini

by Chris May
August 13, 2008

Whether you believe that opera is the loftiest manifestation of lyric art, or a bastard tradition typified by mannered singing, indifferent acting and an audience that would have Robespierre rubbing his hands in glee, there's no doubt that it has some great tunes. British composer and pianist/tuba player Mike Westbrook gathered a few of them together in the mid 1980s for this Rossini project.

Westbrook-Rossini grew out of a commission Westbrook received from a Swiss street-theatre company in ...

Mike Westbrook Orchestra: On Duke's Birthday

by Chris May
July 15, 2007

Among the most characterful and singular British composer/bandleaders, Mike Westbrook is revered by the relative few who follow his music, but is woefully under-appreciated in the wider jazz world. In part, this is because Westbrook paints on a larger canvas than that used in most “conventional" orchestral jazz, frequently taking on projects with textural themes or dramaturgical production values. In part, it's because he is politically engaged and, starting with the early anti-war masterpieces Release (Deram, 1968) and Marching Song ...