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Tony Kofi Quartet: Plays Monk
by Chris May
When it was first released in autumn 2004, Tony Kofi's Plays Monk: All Is Know (as it was then titled) was the saxophonist's first release as leader, a full thirteen years after his emergence with high-profile young Turks the Jazz Warriors. The album went on to win the BBC Jazz Awards Album Of The Year prize. ...
London Brew At Barbican Centre
by Chris May
London Brew Barbican Centre, Main Hall London BrewLondon November 18, 2023 Three years later than originally planned, London Brew made it to the Barbican stage. The star studded ensemble's concert tribute to Miles Davis' Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970) had been intended to mark the fiftieth anniversary of that album. ...
Irreversible Entanglements At EartH
by Chris May
Irreversible Entanglements EartH Theatre Protect Your Light Hackney, London November 15, 2023 Co-winners of this parish's Best Album of 2023 for Protect Your Light (Impulse!), sharing the blunt with the late Jaimie Branch's Fly Or Die quartet's ((World War)) (International Anthem), Irreversible Entanglements' return to the London Jazz ...
Move 78: Grains
by Chris May
A pre-spin hint that this collision of jazz and hip hop is going to be out of the ordinary is apparent from Berlin-based Move 78's lineup. Personnel is Doron Segal synths, Nir Sabag drums, Hal Strewe bass, Meravi Goldman French horn and Aver sampler. On Grains the quintet is joined by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra violist ...
Makaya McCraven At Barbican Centre
by Chris May
Makaya McCraven with London Contemporary Orchestra Barbican Centre, Main Hall In These Times London November 11, 2023 Jazz, said Whitney Balliett in 1958, is the sound of surprise. The New Yorker critic, who passed in 2007 but remains one of jazz literature's most felicitous writers, was describing jazz ...
Albert Ayler: More Lost Performances Revisited
by Chris May
A state-of-the-art sonic restoration of obscure but historically important Albert Ayler material by Switzerland's ezz-thetics label, which with its parent label, Hat Hut, has been creating an audiophile archive of Ayler recordings with the support of his estate since 1978. All too often, “more" in an album title means “Beware: barrel scraping in ...
Bill Evans: Duos With Jim Hall & Trios '64 & '65 Revisited
by Chris May
Although the evidence is circumstantial, it is more than possible that Bill Evans' collaborations with Jim Hall came about through proximity to George Russell. Even Alan Douglas, the producer of the duo's first album, did not claim credit for the liaison; and Douglas, who the same year brought together Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus and Max Roach, ...
Benet McLean: Green Park
by Chris May
Best known as a pianist, with four critically acclaimed albums behind him, on Green Park Benet McLean returns to his first instrument, the violin. The press release says he began studying the instrument at the age of 3, and Wikipedia tells us he was at some stage mentored by classical maestro Yehudi Menuhin. It stacks up. ...
Espen Berg: Water Fabric
by Chris May
The Norwegian pianist and composer Espen Berg has already carved out a formidable reputation with his trio. Earlier in 2023 he began a parallel strand with The Trondheim Concert (NXN), the recording of a wholly in-the-moment improvised solo concert, in the Keith Jarrett tradition, which he gave in 2019. Berg has since released two more albums ...
Physical, digital or streamed? How do you like your recorded jazz?
by Chris May
Time was, round about when jazz was raising its head in New Orleans, if you wanted an affordable car it had to be a Ford Model T. And as Henry Ford said, perhaps apocryphally, you could have had any color you liked as long as it was black. Much the same went for recorded music. You ...
