Results for "Camilla George"

Lift Every Voice And Sing: Twenty #BlackLives Albums That Matter

by Chris May
July 23, 2020

Jazz has been inextricably linked with social and political protest since at least the late 1930s, when Billie Holiday made famous the leftist songwriter and poet Abel Meeropol's “Strange Fruit." The song, which has a power to move that is undiminished by familiarity, likens the bodies of lynched African Americans to fruit hanging in trees.

Denys Baptiste: Pathfinder For The New London Jazz

by Chris May
June 30, 2020

Bandleader, composer and educator Denys Baptiste is among the generation of musicians, many of them of Caribbean or African heritage, who pointed the way for the younger players who have emerged on the London jazz scene since around 2015. Baptiste's contemporaries include saxophonists Jason Yarde, Soweto Kinch, Steve Williamson and Courtney Pine, and trumpeter Byron Wallen, ...

Etuk Ubong: Africa Today

by Chris May
June 5, 2020

Lagos-based Etuk Ubong is part of a long line of fiery, Afrobeat-rooted, hard bop-influenced trumpeters which stretches back to Tunde Williams, who was in the 1960s a founder member of Fela Kuti's seminal band, Africa 70. Kuti's legacy figures large in Ubong's music, which he styles “earth music" and which is characterised by urgent tempos, powerful ...

New Jazz From London: Top 20 Paradigm Shifting Albums

by Chris May
June 1, 2020

After a lifetime trying to get on an equal footing with its American parent, British jazz has finally come of age. Since around 2015, a community of young, London-based musicians has forged a style which, while anchored in the American tradition, reflects the Caribbean and African cultural heritages of many of its vanguard players. The scene ...

Etuk Ubong: Purpose Of Creation / Etuk's Ritual

by Chris May
April 18, 2020

Lagos-based Etuk Ubong is part of a long line of fiery Afrobeat-rooted trumpeters which stretches back to Tunde Williams, a founder member of Fela Kuti's Africa 70 band in the 1960s. The lineage's foundational provenance is centred around players such as Lee Morgan and early period Freddie Hubbard. Ubong made his own-name debut in ...

Alison Rayner Quintet: Short Stories

by Chris May
March 4, 2020

The Alison Rayner Quintet's third album is good medicine. Despite the sad events which inspired it, about which more in a moment, Short Stories tells its tales through strong melodies, sinewy rhythms and luminous solos, is by turns tender and exuberant, has an uplifting narrative arc, and simply makes you feel better for listening to it. ...

Camilla George: Warrior Charge

by Chris May
February 13, 2020

In 2017, alto saxophonist and composer Camilla George's band was the support act for a Dee Dee Bridgewater gig at the London Jazz Festival. After George had finished her set, Bridgewater, who had been listening in the wings, came onstage, took the mike, and announced: “The world is safe because we have Camilla." Others in Cadogan ...

Camilla George

Camilla George is a London based saxophone player, improviser, composer and teacher. She began playing when she was 11 years old where she won a music lesson and as a result, won saxophone lessons. Camilla has studied with many jazz greats such as sax giant, Jean Toussaint (of Art Blakey fame), Tony Kofi, Christian Brewer, Julian Siegal and Martin Speake. In 2012 she graduated with a Masters in Jazz from Trinity College of Music where she also won the Archer Scholarship for outstanding performance.Since 2004 Camilla has been working with both Tomorrows Warriors and the Nu Civilisation Orchestra (including a UK tour performing at many prestigious venues such as the Queen Elizabeth Hall), as well as leading workshops for the younger members of The Warriors family. In 2009 she joined award winning band, Jazz Jamaica whose alumni have included Jason Yarde, Soweto Kinch and Nathaniel Facey

Yazz Ahmed: Polyhymnia

by Chris May
December 15, 2019

The British-Bahraini trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer Yazz Ahmed went clear in 2017 with La Saboteuse (Naim). The album is an otherworldly mix of jazz, electronics and Arabic folk music which carries traces of Miles Davis' In A Silent Way (Columbia, 1969) and Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970) and Jon Hassell's Dream Theory In Malaya: Fourth World Volume ...

Chris May's Best Releases of 2019

by Chris May
December 7, 2019

The world may be going to hell in a handcart, but the year has been full of uplifting jazz. Here are ten of the best albums--the first seven newly recorded, the final three reissued or recently unearthed. Each one is the coyote's cojones. Yazz Ahmed Polyhymnia Ropeadope The eagerly ...