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Giacomo Smith
Zara McFarlane: Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan
by Chris May
Zara McFarlane's fifth album--a recording that actually fits the vogueish description “project"--represents a marked change of focus for the singer, from London to New York City and points west. Closely associated with London's radical underground jazz scene, McFarlane has previously peopled her touring and recording bands with fellow adventurers such Shabaka Hutchings, Shirley Tetteh, Idris Rahman, Robin Hopcraft, Nathaniel Cross, Binker Golding and Moses Boyd. Significantly, too, McFarlane has also written the vast majority of the material she has recorded, ...
Continue Reading...Kansas Smitty's: Things Happened Here
by Chris May
Kansas Smitty's is the house band at a London jazz bar of the same name. Band and bar are fronted by the American-Italian alto saxophonist, clarinetist and bass clarinetist Giacomo Smith, who with guitarist David Archer wrote most of the material on this album. The band's style embraces swing era Kansas City through to more recent styles and is chamber-jazz of elegance and substance. The group cites Django Reinhardt, Ahmad Jamal, Claude Debussy and Brian Eno as ...
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