Jazz Articles

Issie Barratt's Interchange: Donna's Secret

by Duncan Heining
January 24, 2020

Put simply, this is a truly beautiful record. It features eight very different compositions by eight different women composers, including three from outside the band. In other hands, the diversity of styles might have left more an impression of a compilation than of a coherent, integrated programme of music. But that is certainly not the case here. What strikes immediately is the quality of the arrangements and ensembles. The textures are just sumptuous, almost tactile--and you know something's good when ...

Geoffrey Eales: Transcience

by Budd Kopman
August 14, 2016

Transience is Welsh pianist/composer Geoffrey Eales' thirteenth release dating back to 1999. All of the words and music are by Eales, and he has taken this opportunity to express in music his feelings about how ephemeral human existence is in general, but also specifically of the passing within the past year of his mother, as well as that of pianist John Taylor and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. Naturally, the music is highly emotional, but is never cloying or melodramatic. ...

Mark Lockheart & the NDR Big Band: Days Like These

by Nic Jones
March 1, 2010

Considering the instrumental forces that the big band offers, it's surprising how conservative a lot of large ensemble writing is. Days Like These isn't iconoclastically innovative, but there's enough on offer to satisfy those who find such conservatism tiresome.

Saxophonist Mark Lockheart clearly appreciates what he has at his disposal for all of the relatively conventional section scoring. NDR is a band that embraces rhythmic precision, even as it remains loose enough to avoid sounding drilled. Despite the cyclical, quasi-minimalist ...

John Warren: Following On

by Nic Jones
February 24, 2010

John Warren was fortunate in having the services of a cross-section of British jazz talent in the realization of Following On. Their talents and his writing and arranging meld nicely here, the overall feeling being that of friends coming together, with a view towards mutual cooperation.

There are, however, negative implications. There are times when it's hard to get behind the surface elegance and urbanity of the music. An effortlessness in Warren's work makes this inevitable, perhaps, but is often ...

John Warren: Finally Beginning

by Nic Jones
November 10, 2008

John Warren is a veteran of the British jazz scene having turned in work with baritone saxophonist John Surman over the decades. He's here exclusively as a composer and arranger and responsible for the entire program of music, apart from a reading of Thelonious Monk's “Ruby My Dear" which falls right in with the overall ethos, even as it retains its individuality.

Warren is fortunate indeed in having been able to assemble a crack band to give life to his ...

Issie Barratt: Astral Pleasures

by Nic Jones
November 8, 2008

Composer/baritone saxophonist Issie Barratt's music is nothing if not distinctive. The balance it strikes between ensemble and soloists usually comes down on the side of the former. Soloists such as guitarist Mike Outram--whose work sometimes recalls Chris Spedding's in the early line-ups of trumpeter Ian Carr's band Nucleus--and saxophonist Mark Lockheart, however, ensure that there's enough stimulation for listeners whose interests fall into one camp or the other. Lockheart is a one-time member of the British band Loose Tubes, and ...