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Mark Kavuma
Mark Kavuma & The Banger Factory: Magnum Opus
by Neil Duggan
Originally set up in 2015, The Banger Factory is a 20-plus collective led by composer and trumpeter Mark Kavuma. It is also the name of his record label. Both act as a showcase for some of the most gifted jazz talent the UK has to offer. Kavuma has a focus on nurturing young talent and providing vital opportunities for the next jazz generation to the extent that he acts as tutor at two London community-based charities. Across its ...
Continue ReadingAlex Hitchcock: Dream Band: Live in London
by Glenn Astarita
This is a bold expedition into the heart of progressive jazz, rendered across a vast canvas of three enthralling nights at the Vortex Jazz Club in London. This three-CD collection is not just a mere album, but a grand, audacious gathering of talents which blurs the line between a larger ensemble setup and a more intimate, modern band experience. Hitchcock's nifty approach to ensemble creation is at the core of this live recording. Rather than sticking ...
Continue ReadingAlex Hitchcock: Dream Band Live In London
by Chris May
Viewed in retrospect, the abiding memory of 2023 is that it produced too many jazz albums prioritizing technical facility over emotional engagement. In London, New York and elsewhere (but not, so it seemed, in Chicago), musicians appeared to focus on virtuosity rather than feeling. Dullsville. For the record, some of those albums that did put soul on, at the least, an equal footing with cerebralism, are to be found in the Best Albums of 2023 round-up which can be read ...
Continue ReadingMark Kavuma & The Banger Factory At Milton Court Concert Hall
by Chris May
Mark KavumaMilton Court Concert HallLondonNovember 18, 2022 Fittingly for one of the closing events of the 2022 London Jazz Festival, trumpeter Mark Kavuma's performance at the Barbican Centre's associate concert hall, a few hundred yards down the road from the main venue, was on an epic scale. Kavuma appeared with his twelve-piece Banger Factory band, an eleven-piece gospel choir and the eighteen-piece Kinetika Bloco community big band, of which he is an alumnus and ...
Continue ReadingArtie Zaitz & Mark Kavuma featuring William Cleasby: Back To Back
by Chris May
Trumpeter Mark Kavuma and his band The Banger Factory have released three of the most enjoyable and well-crafted albums to come out of London in recent years: Kavuma (Ubuntu, 2018), with The Banger Factory there in all but name, The Banger Factory (Ubuntu, 2019), made by the fully formed band, and Arashi No Ato (Banger Factory Records, 2021). But although the outfit does not qualify for “best kept secret" status, its audience base has so far remained a local one. ...
Continue ReadingKinetika Bloco: Legacy
by Chris May
Legacy features some of the London jazz scene's leading players, among them tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia, trumpeters Claude Deppa, Mark Kavuma and Sheila Maurice-Grey, trombonist Nathaniel Cross and tubaist Theon Cross. As you would anticipate, there is much great jazz to be heard on the album, and along the way it bears witness to community spirit and the power of music to do good. It was recorded to celebrate the achievements of the music charity Kinetika Bloco ...
Continue ReadingMark Kavuma & The Banger Factory: Arashi No Oto
by Chris May
London-based trumpeter and composer Mark Kavuma was last seen in this parish in July 2019. At the start of that month, Kavuma released his second album with his nonet, The Banger Factory. A couple of weeks later, he led a quintet on the floor of the Barbican Art Gallery, performing Thelonious Monk's Brilliant Corners (Riverside, 1956) on the opening night of an exhibition celebrating the work of Monk's contemporary, the Abstract Expressionist painter Lee Krasner, who was a big Monk ...
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