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Artie Zaitz
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 ReadingArtie Zaitz: The Regulator
by Neil Duggan
It might seem strange to be considered a veteran when you are in your 30s, but after more than a decade performing and recording with various bands both in the UK and internationally, guitarist Artie Zaitz seems to have become part of the fabric of the UK jazz music scene. He has worked with The Banger Factory, Pee Wee Ellis, Camilla George and Moses Boyd. Zaitz is also a Hammond organ enthusiast, often performing on his 1961 Hammond C-3 organ ...
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 ReadingQuinn Oulton: Alexithymia
by Peter Jones
It was hardly a new sentiment: "Jazz is dead," proclaimed trumpet-player Theo Croker at a recent London gig. What he meant, of course, was that the word jazz is dead, a turn-off for the general public, and a millstone around the necks of those who try to make a living out of playing it. Why can't we just call it music? he wanted to know.This new album by British singer-composer-saxophonist-multi-instrumentalist Quinn Oulton asks the same question implicitly. In ...
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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