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Tori Handsley: As We Stand
by Chris May
Harpist Tori Handsley is a prominent sideperson on London's alternative jazz scene.She has worked with reed player Shabaka Hutchings, tenor saxophonist Nubya Garcia and keyboard player Nikki Yeoh among other luminaries. She is perhaps best known for her contributions to two albums by Binker and Moses, the ferocious semi-free duo led by tenor saxophonist Binker Golding ...
Nick Storring: My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell
by Chris May
Now here is a strange one. My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell was conceived and composed by Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist Nick Storring as a homage to Roberta Flack. But it contains none of her tunes, not even snatches of them. Instead Storring, a sonic sorcerer who is also a fully paid-up Flack connoisseur, has taken phrases ...
Josephine Davies: How Can We Wake?
by Friedrich Kunzmann
Straight out of Europe's hippest jazz-scene, London-based saxophonist Josephine Davie's third effort with her trio, Satori, offers a collage of melodic meditations that simultaneously defy and conform to their rhythmic and harmonic frames. As All About Jazz's Chris May very fittingly puts it in an extensive conversation with the saxophonist, unlike many of her ...
Sun Ra Arkestra: Swirling
by Chris May
Saturn moved into the ascendant in October 2020 when the Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of alto saxophonist Marshall Allen released its first studio album in over twenty years. Swirling presents new arrangements of both well-known and more obscure Ra tunes, played by a fifteen-piece lineup which includes band veterans and relative newcomers. It is ...
Matthew Halsall: Salute To The Sun
by Chris May
Trumpeter and composer Matthew Halsall is an inspirational figure on the British scene, as a musician and as the founder of the successful Gondwana Records label. Based in the northern city of Manchester, two hundred miles and a lifestyle away from London, Halsall debuted in 2008 with Sending My Love, on which he unveiled his distinctive ...
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Guaranteed To Bend Your Head
by Chris May
Jazz musicians are rarely called shamanistic but the description fits Rahsaan Roland Kirk precisely. Clad in black leather trousers and heavy duty shades (he was blind from the age of two), a truckload of strange looking horns strung round his neck—two or three of which he often played simultaneously--twisting, shaking and otherwise contorting his body, stamping ...
Johanna Burnheart: Techno Jazz Shines A Light: New Directions In Music
by Chris May
A relatively new name on London's alternative jazz scene, the German-born violinist, vocalist and composer Johanna Burnheart has made a rapid ascent since leaving the city's Guildhall School of Music & Drama in 2018. She has played on three of the scene's benchmark albums--spiritual-jazz band Maisha's There Is A Place (Brownswood, 2018), trombonist Rosie Turton's 5ive ...
Ennio Morricone: Fabled Hoard Of 1970s Library Music Reissued
by Chris May
Practically unobtainable since their release by RCA Italy in 1972, the ten albums which make up Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai's Dimensioni Sonore: Musiche Per L'Immagine E L'Immaginazione are being reissued by Dialogo on October 30 2020. The new release plugs a chasm in the availability of classic-era library music, which at its best is an ...
King Khan: The Infinite Ones
by Chris May
Something about the vibe of this completely wonderful album, and the milieu which its record label inhabits, puts one in mind of Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's self-published limited-editions of the 1960s. These were, according to information given on page three, “Printed, published, freaked out, & zapped by the Fuck You/ press at a secret grope-bunker somewhere ...
Johanna Burnheart: Burnheart
by Chris May
The violin has an eventful history in jazz. But it is still a niche instrument, despite a line of singular players stretching back to Stephane Grappelli and Stuff Smith (who deserves some bonus points for composing the immortal “If You're A Viper"). There are no schools of jazz violinists, simply a succession of one-off stylists, with ...
