Articles by Andrew Hunter

Album Review

Emma Rawicz: Paintbox

Read "Paintbox" reviewed by Andrew Hunter

by Andrew Hunter
October 19, 2026

Emma Rawicz is a British saxophonist and bandleader who has been remarkably busy since 2021, winning Jazz Newcomer of the Year at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards, a Drake YolanDa award and becoming a BBC Young Musician Jazz Award finalist. She was also nominated for Instrumentalist of the Year at the Jazz FM Awards. Paintbox is her fifth record and the fourth for the ACT Music label. “Cowboys and Aliens" opens the record with a repetitive riff that would not ...

Album Review

Mike Lorenz: I'm Not There

Read "I'm Not There" reviewed by Andrew Hunter

by Andrew Hunter
August 25, 2026

Following a period of change, upheaval and reflection in his personal life, Mike Lorenz says that this record demonstrates a new approach for him, reflecting both his roots in jazz and the fact that he has been listening to a lot of songwriters; writers such as Jeff Tweedy and Elliott Smith. The opening track “Where Do You Go?" certainly shows songwriterly dexterity in combining different harmonic and melodic ideas into a congruent whole. The trio setting is pure ...

Album Review

UDEiGWE: Four Lemmas

Read "Four Lemmas" reviewed by Andrew Hunter

by Andrew Hunter
July 17, 2026

Jazz is a beautifully broad church. Whoever you are, whatever you have to say, you are welcome to say it as long as you bring an open heart and an open mind. So when a math professor chooses to express his thoughts on identity through “an eight track concept suite structured as four lemmas [in math, supporting propositions that prepare the ground for larger ideas], each anchored in a mathematical idea used as a conceptual framework," well, why ...

Album Review

Dylan Jones: Statue

by Andrew Hunter
July 14, 2026

Like so many talented young musicians in London, Dylan Jones spent some time developing his skills with Tomorrow's Warriors, a talent development organization without which we might never have heard Courtney Pine, Steve Williamson, Yazz Ahmed, Nubya Garcia, Soweto Kinch... The London scene would be very different without them. Jones played in Ezra Collective with other Tomorrow's Warriors alumni. Then he fell in with Mark Kavuma, a fellow trumpeter and another notable nurturer of young talent. Statue is ...

Album Review

Oiseau Murmure: Oiseau Murmure

Read "Oiseau Murmure" reviewed by Andrew Hunter

by Andrew Hunter
June 10, 2026

Oiseau Murmure, the name of the band and the record, means, literally, whispering birds. It also describes birds in murmuration--the beautiful, elastic clouds in which birds whisper at dusk. How fitting for such a beautiful work as this. Ouisea Murmure is a trio consisting of three very accomplished, very experienced musicians, taking some time away from their many individual projects to create something 'fragile and free,' composed in the moment. Nicolas Naudet plays clarinets, sometimes quite ...

Album Review

Theo Girard: La rivière coulera sans effort

Read "La rivière coulera sans effort" reviewed by Andrew Hunter

by Andrew Hunter
December 8, 2025

French double bassist Théo Girard has built a career with great patience, not releasing his debut as a leader until the age of 40. That well- received record, 30YearsFrom (Discoble, 2017), was a trio piece and included drummer-in-demand Sebastian Rochford, with whom Girard has built a not inconsiderable body of work. La Rivière Coulera Sans Effort (The River Will Flow Without Effort) is the first with a new quartet called Mobke--the 'Mo' from Montreuil, a district of Paris, and the ...

Live Review

J.A.M. String Collective at Hot Numbers, Cambridge

by Andrew Hunter
November 19, 2025

J.A.M. String Collective Hot Numbers Cambridge Jazz Festival Cambridge, England November 14 2025 It was a wet, dark night to follow a day so wet it felt like the sun never really came up at all. There was a food van in the street working hard to keep up with the demand for burgers and fries. Lights twinkled and beckoned through the glass door and inside it smelt of coffee, wine and damp-but-drying music ...

Album Review

Fergus McCreadie: The Shieling

Read "The Shieling" reviewed by Andrew Hunter

by Andrew Hunter
October 24, 2025

Things tend to come in pairs. The animals went into the ark, all those years ago, two by two. Tonic water was created to control the symptoms of malaria but found its voice when mixed with gin to control the symptoms of reality. Some pairings work against the odds; until you have tried strawberries with black pepper, it is hard to imagine what a harmonious pairing they are. The point being, if you saw Scottish folk served with ...

Album Review

Eshaan Sood Presents The Sonic Alchemists: The Sonic Alchemists I: Dream River

Read "The Sonic Alchemists I: Dream River" reviewed by Andrew Hunter

by Andrew Hunter
October 3, 2025

Guitarist Eshaan Sood came to jazz by the most unlikely and brutal of routes. Born and raised in New Delhi, India, he was expecting to begin a career as a graphic artist until he lost his sight in a terrible car accident that he was lucky to survive. Rather than despairing, he moved his focus to his other love--music. A guitar, piano, bass and tabla player from a very young age, he enrolled at the Global Music Institute ...

Album Review

Jasper Høiby: Fellow Creatures: We Must Fight

Read "Fellow Creatures: We Must Fight" reviewed by Andrew Hunter

by Andrew Hunter
September 9, 2025

Fellow Creatures is the band that bassist Jasper Høiby has assembled around himself and they are clearly a talented bunch. They would have to be, to revisit material from Høiby's previous band, Phronesis. That trio of Høiby, Anton Eger and Ivo Neame were almost hyperbolically highly regarded. A quick internet search will show how well reviewed they were, not only amongst the jazz cognoscenti, but also in the mainstream media. Much of the material on this record was ...