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Jazz Articles about Tamar Osborn
Josephine Davies & The Ensō Ensemble: The Celtic Wheel Of The Year Suite
by Angelo Leonardi
Sassofonista e compositrice britannica, nota per il trio Satori, Josephine Davies debutta con un ricco e raffinato progetto orchestrale, che presenta la sua suite in otto parti ispirata alle feste stagionali celtiche delle isole Shetland. “Dopo aver composto diversi pezzi per orchestra jazz" --ha detto Josephine--"ispirata da un trasferimento in campagna durante il lockdown, ho sentito l'urgenza di approfondire il mio legame con la natura e rivisitare una mia precedente composizione. (...) Ogni movimento della suite è ispirato ...
Continue ReadingFlock: Flock II
by Chris May
Flock is composed of five of the most venturesome musicians in British jazz. Reeds and woodwind player Tamar Osborn, drummers and percussionists Bex Burch and Sarathy Korwar, and keyboard players Danalogue and Al MacSween. Separately and collaboratively, they have since the late 2010s given us landmark genre-crossing albums in bands including Emanative, The Comet Is Coming, Vula Viel, Collocutor, Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra, Upaj Collective and Kefaya. So the auguries look good for Flock's sophomore release, the ...
Continue ReadingMOMO.: Gira
by Chris May
Gira is one of those exhilarating beyond-category albums which London produces uniquely well, if the gentle reader will excuse a little partisanship. It is part música popular brasileira (MPB) and part jazz, but never entirely one or the other, swinging between the two as the fancy takes it. Add to that splashes of West African highlife, South African township jive, Maghrebi grooves, psychedelia, reggae and the sort of instantly addictive North Mediterranean quasi-novelty summer-holiday pop song that can take July ...
Continue ReadingJake Long: City Swamp
by Chris May
Drummer, composer and producer Jake Long's house-rocking City Swamp is part of a trilogy of post-2022 albums out of London's underground jazz scene which are connected by adjacent sources of inspiration, identical creative processes, and crossovers of personnel. Synchronicity and zeitgeist are writ large and, much of the time, in neon. The other two albums are drummer Tom Skinner's Voices Of Bishara (Brownswood, 2022) and London Brew's London Brew (Concord, 2023). City Swamp and London Brew both take their jump-off ...
Continue ReadingFlock: Flock
by Chris May
One of the strengths of the alternative jazz scene which has grown in London since around 2016 is the interconnectivity of its players. Everyone knows each other and ad hoc bands constantly come together. Flock is the latest such conclave and it is something of a supergroup. On this its first album--others are promised--the lineup is reeds player Tamar Osborn, keyboard player Danalogue, pianist Al MacSween, vibraphonist Bex Burch and percussionist Sarathy Korwar (check Additional Personnel below ...
Continue ReadingSarathy Korwar & Upaj Collective: Night Dreamer Direct-To-Disc Sessions
by Chris May
In her October 2020 interview with All About Jazz, baritone saxophonist, Collocutor bandleader, Afrobeat shaman and Upaj Collective founder member Tamar Osborn was asked to name six of her all-time favourite albums. One of them was Shakti's Natural Elements (Columbia, 1970), on which John McLaughlin plays a guitar customised to sound like a sitar. “To me, it's still one of the best meetings of two traditions you can listen to," said Osborn. “You can hear the mutual respect, the communication ...
Continue ReadingTamar Osborn: From Kalakuta To Collocutor: New Directions In Jazz
by Chris May
She has been likened to Gil Evans, Fela Kuti, Pharoah Sanders, Bismillah Khan and Mulatu Astatke, and the traditions represented by those musicians are all to be heard in the music of baritone saxophonist and composer Tamar Osborn. Osborn's aesthetic, however, is her own, and her band, Collocutor, is among the most distinctive on the British jazz scene. Collocutor is three albums old. It began as a studio project with the album Instead in 2014 and then became ...
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