Home » Search Center » Results: Chris May
Results for "Chris May"
Run Logan Run: Nature Will Take Care Of You
by Chris May
Although they often remain below the radar of the international jazz audience, British cities other than London support thriving jazz and beyond-jazz scenes, and the port of Bristol has a particularly fertile one. Among its luminaries are Run Logan Run, a duo comprising saxophonist Andrew Neil Hayes and drummer Matt Brown. Nature Will Take Care Of ...
Tom Skinner: The Son Of Kemet Shines A Light
by Chris May
Tom Skinner has been a vital presence on the alternative London jazz scene for close on twenty years. Yet, remarkably, only now in November 2022 is the drummer and composer releasing his first album under his own name. Voices Of Bishara features Skinner alongside four friends and fellow radicals: tenor saxophonists Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings, ...
Charles Stepney: Step By Step
by Chris May
Chicago born, bred and buttered, the composer, arranger and producer Charles Stepney (1931-76) lived and worked on the porous boundary between jazz and funk which has existed since James Brown first got on the good foot. As a staff producer for the Chess label in the 1960s, and later as an independent, Stepney worked on recordings ...
Gyedu-Blay Ambolley: Gyedu-Blay Ambolley And Hi-Life Jazz
by Chris May
In the beginning, that is to say the 1950s and 1960s, there were two main strands of highlife, Ghana's national dance music. One was rural based, played by ensembles using acoustic guitars and traditional percussion instruments. The other was urban based, played by bands using kit drums as well as traditional percussion, and with large horn ...
Dezron Douglas: Atalaya
by Chris May
Atalaya is Dezron Douglas' first full-length album leading a band in over four years. The bassist's recent sightings have whet the appetite rather than deliver the main course. Black Lion (Self Produced, 2018), made with a sextet, attracted good notices, but was an EP. His appearance on drummer Makaya McCraven's Universal Beings (International Anthem, 2018) was ...
Michael Blake: Combobulate
by Chris May
The instrumentation alone promises something out of the ordinary. Saxophone, two tubas, trumpet, trombone, drums. Then there are the musicians, luminaries of downtown New York jazz. Michael Blake, Bob Stewart, Marcus Rojas, Steven Bernstein, Clark Gayton, Allan Mednard. And within seconds of the needle descending on track one, side one, Combobulate starts delivering on the promise. ...
Elvin Jones: Revival: Live At Pookie’s Pub
by Chris May
A welcome addition to Elvin Jones' catalogue, the previously unissued 2 x CD / 4 x LP Revival: Live At Pookie's Pub was recorded in New York in July 1967. The gig was just two weeks after the passing of John Coltrane, with whom Jones had played from 1960 to 1966. Jones' quartet includes the gritty ...
Various Artists: John Sinclair Presents Detroit Artists Workshop
by Chris May
Valuable as both a curated chronicle of jazz history and as high-grade music, John Sinclair Presents Detroit Artists Workshop: Community, Jazz And Art In The Motor City 1965—1981 comprises around 70 minutes of live recordings by some of Detroit's finest sons along with an informative 24-page booklet. Among the musicians are trumpeters Donald Byrd and Charles ...
Miles Davis Quintet: 2nd Session 1956 Revisited
by Chris May
Rough round the edges some of the performances might be, but that is part of their real-time, first-take charm. The twelve tracks collected on 2nd Session 1956 Revisited are, nonetheless, arguably the most perfect Miles Davis ever recorded. Over the years they have been issued and reissued, anthologised and repackaged, almost as often as Louis Armstrong's ...
Edrix Puzzle: Coming Of The Moon Dogs
by Chris May
There are precious few records out there that one feels confident in recommending to connoisseurs of cosmic jazz-rockers The Comet Is Coming, but Coming Of The Moon Dogs is one of them. The disc is the first full-length album from Edrix Puzzle, another British band who are stretching the definition of jazz while being audibly across ...
