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Bill Evans: Everybody Still Digs Bill Evans: A Career Retrospective (1956 - 1980)
by Chris May
Only occasionally do classy looking limited-edition box sets prove to be a triumph of style and substance. Too often they are undermined by cheapskate packaging, over elaborate design, poorly written and researched booklets, inadequate session details or, most egregiously, bizarre (in a bad way) track selections. So it is a more than pleasant surprise when something ...
OK Aurora: Only In Autumn
by Chris May
Rod Oughton is a young London drummer with considerable technical proficiency, and a composer and bandleader of promise. With his octet OK Aurora, which prominently features singer Alina Miroshnichenko, Oughton aims to bridge the gap between jazz and what might rather patronizingly be called intelligent pop. Only In Autumn is the band's second release, following the ...
Don Rendell / Ian Carr Quintet: Blue Beginnings
by Chris May
Summer 2021 is proving to be the summer British jazz delved into its mid 1960s through mid 1970s album back catalogue and previously unreleased tape archive, with both major and specialist labels such as Jazz In Britain joining in the party. The spur to action is, of course, the new and unprecedented popularity of British jazz ...
Ed Puddick / The Upper Austrian Jazz Orchestra: Crazy Days
by Chris May
The opener / title track of this album could well be taken to refer to Britain's 2016 referendum on whether or not to remain in or leave the European Union, for the disc's second half, and its main event, is composer Ed Puddick's thirty-five minute “The Brexit Suite." In fact, Puddick was thinking about something else ...
Don Rendell Quintet: Space Walk
by Chris May
As British jazz reaches new and unprecedented peaks of popularity, major labels are revisiting their vaults and rereleasing artistically enduring but long unavailable albums. Universal/Decca's British Jazz Explosion: Originals Re-Cut is the most ambitious of such reissue programs to be announced so far in 2021. It concentrates on the years 1965 -1972, a pivotal period in ...
Andrew Woolf: Song Unsung
by Chris May
Although London-based tenor saxophonist Andrew Woolf has been releasing records since 2012, Song Unsung is the first he has issued under his own name. His debut, which was actually recorded in 2008, was the EP Soma Quartet (Self Produced), made by Woolf, electric guitarist Ryan Williams, double bassist Will Collier and trumpeter Joe Auckland. The disc ...
Various: Journeys In Modern Jazz: Britain (1965-1972)
by Chris May
As British jazz in 2021 reaches domestic and international audiences of unprecedented size, so record companies are being emboldened to open up their archives and reissue long-buried treasures. So, too, are new labels being formed to make available recordings which have not previously been released, but which have survived in the tape libraries of the musicians ...
Albert Ayler Quartet with Don Cherry: European Recordings Autumn 1964 Revisited
by Chris May
Many attempts have been made to locate the source of tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler's muse in American history and culture. Among the less outlandish suggestions are the field hollers of slaves toiling on Southern plantations and the Pentecostal church's tradition of talking in tongues. Given the importance Ayler's parents placed on him attending church as a ...
Charles Mingus: Mingus At Carnegie Hall (Deluxe Edition)
by Chris May
This 2-CD set takes the 1974 album Mingus At Carnegie Hall (Atlantic) and adds seventy minutes of previously unissued material recorded at the same concert. It is as worthwhile an addition to Charles Mingus' recorded legacy as 2020's previously unissued 2-CD set Charles Mingus @ Bremen 1964 & 1975 (Sunnyside). Why it has taken so long ...
Nathaniel Cross: Deep Vibrations
by Chris May
At the time of writing in summer 2021, there are a number of super-talented musicians on London's alternative jazz scene who deserve far more prominence than they have yet to achieve. Some of these players have been ill-served by their record labels. Others have only recorded as sidepersons. A few have chosen to confine their music-making ...
