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Nat Birchall: Ancient Africa
by Chris May
Tucked away in the rural north of England, and so doubly off the media radar, tenor saxophonist Nat Birchall is one of Britain's best kept secrets. His specialism is the strand of spiritual jazz pioneered by John Coltrane in the mid 1960s. Since the turn of the millennium, Birchall has released a string of albums ringing ...
Ivo Neame: Glimpses of Truth
by Chris May
"The Rise of The Lizard People," the title of the scene-setting opening track on Ivo Neame's Glimpses Of Truth, was prompted by an article Neame read which claimed that 12 million Americans believe that interstellar lizards run the United States. Only 12 million? In a country with a population approaching 332 million, around half of whose ...
Ill Considered: Liminal Space
by Chris May
London's semi-free trio Ill Considered makes music in much the same way as does tenor saxophonist Binker Golding and drummer Moses Boyd's duo, Binker and Moses--using simple rhythmelodic motifs as jumping off points for otherwise unstructured improvisation, much of it blazingly intense. Originally a quartet, Ill Considered now comprises founder members tenor saxophonist and bass clarinetist ...
Sean Khan: Supreme Love – A Journey Through Coltrane
by Chris May
One thing you can count on with alto and soprano saxophonist Sean Khan is that he will never approach a project from a predictable angle. In this he resembles tenor saxophonist Steve Williamson. Both are among the most idiosyncratic of British jazz musicians as well as being uncompromising exponents of jazz as rebel music. Both first ...
Theon Cross: Intra-I
by Chris May
A member of tenor saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings' Sons Of Kemet since 2015, tuba player Theon Cross released his first full-length album, Fyah (Gearbox), in 2019. Most of it was performed by a trio comprising Cross, tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia and drummer Moses Boyd, augmented on two tracks by other luminaries of the alternative London jazz scene. ...
Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers: First Flight to Tokyo: The Lost 1961 Recordings
by Chris May
There is a saying in the opera world which, though innocuous on the face of it, damns a work before the overture has begun let alone after the fat lady sings. The saying, beloved of breathless publicists deaf to its implication, is that such and such an opera is “rarely performed." The reason it ...
Daniel Casimir: Boxed In
by Chris May
Because of the supporting-cast role generally assigned to his instrument, bassist Daniel Casimir is not a household name in British jazz. But among musicians on the alternative London scene, and aficionados of it, he is highly regarded. Casimir is, for example, the bassist on all of tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia's recorded output to date. Garcia returns ...
Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro-Latin Jazz Ensemble: Dreaming In Lions
by Chris May
Music for dance comes in a variety of forms. At one end of the spectrum are abstract soundscapes composed without reference to the choreography with which they share the stage; an example being John Cage's work with the choreographer Merce Cunningham. At the other end of the spectrum is music written in close collaboration with the ...
Run Logan Run: For A Brief Moment We Could Smell The Flowers
by Chris May
Tenor saxophone and drums albums have been at the heart of London's alternative jazz scene since its first stirrings around 2015. That year, saxophonist Binker Golding and drummer Moses Boyd, then members of singer Zara McFarlane's backing band, started tossing riffs and beats back and forth to each other during pre-gig soundchecks. In ...
John Coltrane: Chasin' The Trane Revisited
by Chris May
A high-tide moment in jazz history, John Coltrane's November 1-5 1961 engagement at New York's Village Vanguard was exhaustively documented on a series of Impulse albums during the 1960s and 1990s. Those discs have now, in autumn 2021, been supplemented by the Swiss-based ezz-thetics label's magnificent Chasin' The Trane Revisited. Before examining the new ...
