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Stan Tracey Quartet: Jazz Suite Inspired By Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood
by Chris May
Pianist and composer Stan Tracey's Under Milk Wood, released in 1966, was among the first albums to prove that British jazz could, on a good day, stand as tall as its American parent. Over a decade would pass, however, before that fact was widely accepted by jazz lovers in either America or Britain. Indeed, it is only now, in 2023, following the international breakthrough of London-based stylists such as Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings, that British jazz has taken its ...
read moreStan Tracey Trio: The 1959 Sessions
by Chris May
Sonny Rollins summed up the outsize talent of British pianist Stan Tracey in a remark he made sometime in the early 1960s. Tracey was then the house pianist at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, where Rollins was playing a season. “Does anyone over here realise how good this guy is?" Rollins asked the audience. At the time, local jazz musicians were automatically regarded as inferior to Americans by many British jazz fans. Not all American tenor saxophonists were ...
read moreSplinters: 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 ...
read moreStan Tracey: The Flying Pig
by Phil Barnes
As premises for an entertaining listen go the idea of a jazz record inspired by the First World War is not the easiest sell, even for a musician as respected as the late Stan Tracey. Yet on this fantastic collection, his final release prior to his December 2013 death, Tracey has somehow managed to pull it off by shifting his creative focus from the horrors of the Great War to the indefatigable spirit and humour of the soldiers caught up ...
read moreStan Tracey: The Flying Pig
by Duncan Heining
Stan Tracey is one of the most highly regarded British jazz musicians of any era. Doesn't matter who you speak to--fans, critics or fellow musicians such as Guy Barker, John Surman, Evan Parker or Keith Tippett--Tracey's story is, in many ways, the history of post-war British jazz. This new CD, Flying Pig, is more than a reminder of his abilities. Like its predecessor, A Child's Christmas from 2011, it ranks alongside the pianist's best work. Tracey will be ...
read moreLondon Jazz Festival 2013
by Duncan Heining
Enrico Pieranunzi, Julie Sassoon and Stan Tracey--Pianos on the Edge London Jazz Festival November 15-24, 2014 The Bishopsgate Institute in the City of London, a few blocks from the Bank of England, might seem an odd place for a jazz gig but--under the auspices of the Vortex Jazz Club in Dalston--stranger things do happen. On this opening night of 2013's EFG London Jazz Festival, this double bill of the Enrico Pieranunzi Trio and Julie Sassoon ...
read moreLondon Jazz Festival Preview: November 10th to 19th
by John Eyles
Now that autumn is here, the London Jazz Festival can't be far behind. This year, the LJF runs from Friday 10th November until Sunday 19th November. In those ten days, the festival will include its usual mix of jazz superstars and legends, rising stars, crowd pleasers, cult heroes, great freebies, plus--with nearly twenty gigs on some days--a large slice of frustration that one cannot be in two (or more) places at once. Birthday celebrations abound this year--Dave Holland's 60th, Mike ...
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