Jazz Articles about Portico Quartet

Portico Quartet: Montreal, Canada, October 2, 2010

by John Kelman
October 12, 2010

Portico QuartetL'AstralMontreal, CanadaOctober 2, 2010 It's a tough slog for a European band to break into the North American market. High work visa costs, expensive travel between cities distanced by hundreds--if not thousands--of miles add logistical nightmares to the fact that the North American market is so flooded with new music that you've got to be special to have even a small hope of rising above it all to be heard. Fortunately, UK's Portico ...

Portico Quartet at Norwich Arts Centre, UK

by Bruce Lindsay
December 1, 2009

Portico Quartet Norwich Arts Centre Norwich, UK November 16, 2009 Portico Quartet is establishing itself at the forefront of the British jazz scene--a young band with a distinctive and recognizable sound that is both immediately accessible and also full of complex patterns and melodies that repay repeated listening. Their first headlining performance at Norwich Arts Centre saw the band play two sets to a packed, and hushed, auditorium. This date ...

Portico Quartet: Not Particularly a Jazz Band

by Bruce Lindsay
November 10, 2009

The history of Portico Quartet is brief, but it's also eventful. Since forming in 2005, this young British band have seen their first album, Knee Deep In The North Sea (Babel, 2007), become a Mercury Music Award Album of the Year, they've gathered rave reviews for their second album, Isla (Real World, 2009), and they've introduced a brand new acoustic instrument into the jazz repertoire. Although much of their music is recognizably “jazz," their use of the Hang creates a ...

Portico Quartet: Isla

by Chris May
October 12, 2009

Having created a seismic sensation in Britain with its first album, Knee Deep In The North Sea (Babel, 2007)--which was a Mercury Prize Album Of The Year in 2008--Portico Quartet now releases that “difficult" second album. Can the group better its precocious debut? Yes it can. Portico has grown, as a collective entity and as individual musicians, and it's associating, rewardingly, with some heavy hitters: signed to Peter Gabriel's Real World Records and produced by John Leckie, whose credits include ...

Portico Quartet: Knee Deep In The North Sea

by Chris May
October 31, 2007

Portico Quartet are currently le dernier cri in London--awards nominations, MTV sync deals and top-end TV and radio sessions are being thrown their way like confetti. Knee Deep In The North Sea is the quartet's debut album and it proves to be great stuff, deserving of much of the media cavalcade.

Portico's USP is the inclusion of two hangs in the line-up. Two whats? Invented in the late 1990s by a pair of Swiss-based world music enthusiasts, the ...