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Whiplash In Concert At Barbican Hall
by Chris May
Multiquarium Big Band Barbican Hall Whiplash in ConcertLondon July 4, 2024 Studying at a music conservatoire can stifle an aspiring young jazz musician, and to inhabit for a moment the world of the Whiplash baddie Professor Terence Fletcher, there are times when one might wish it stifled more of ...
Giovanni Guidi: A New Day
by Chris May
There are in effect two albums on this disc by Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi's trio, and whether a listener would prefer to have just one of them will be a matter of personal taste. The duality stems from the presence of guest tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis on four of the seven tracks. ...
RAH & The Ruffcats: Orile To Berlin
by Chris May
Among the many Afrobeat bands which have emerged outside Nigeria since Fela Kuti passed in 1997, some of them first class, only a tiny few have succeeded in getting close to the sheer majesty of sound that Kuti conjured. The honor roll notably includes London's Soothsayers and Dele Sosimi Afrobeat Orchestra. Here comes another honoree. Take ...
Arthur Verocai With Nu Civilisation Orchestra At Barbican Hall
by Chris May
Arthur Verocai with Nu Civilisation Orchestra Barbican Hall Arthur VerocaiLondon June 28, 2024 To begin where the evening ended, it surely must be that the phenomenal standing ovation which concluded Arthur Verocai's concert was the most tumultuous ever heard in Barbican Hall. It was loud enough literally to hurt the ...
Linda Sikhakhane: Iladi
by Chris May
It is beyond coincidence that the two most uplifting albums released by male saxophonists so far in 2024 were made by players who use their music, in part, to celebrate female wisdom. The albums are Linda Sikhakhane's Iladi and Oded Tzur's My Prophet (ECM). New York-based Tzur's My Prophet, like its immediate predecessor, ...
Jon De Lucia: The Brubeck Octet Project
by Chris May
Synchronicity is a wondrous thing. Item: At around the same time that Albert Ayler was developing his sound in the U.S.A., the Ethiopian tenor saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya was forging a strikingly similar one in Addis Ababa. Neither player had heard the other, and Mekurya had never heard any jazz at all. Feel the Force?
Larry Nozero: Time
by Chris May
Here is an odd one. Originally released on the short-lived Detroit label Strata in 1975, Larry Nozero's Time defies categorization. First-generation spiritual jazz, Henry Mancini, Motown, strings (real and synthed), the Swingle Singers, Braziliana and Shaft era Isaac Hayes jostle around the mic, along with Sibylline hints of Kamasi Washington. Is it for real? Is it ...
AnkAnum: Song Of The Motherland
by Chris May
It is always interesting to learn about the world views of the parents of a significant artist, and to consider how they may have influenced their offspring's work. Take the filmmaker Spike Lee. His father was the bassist and composer Bill Lee, who in the 1960s worked with Johnny Griffin, Aretha Franklin and John Lee Hooker, ...
Tomasz Stanko Quartet: September Night
by Chris May
How sorely Tomasz Stańko is missed. When he passed in 2018, his career had spanned practically the entire lifetime of homegrown Polish jazz, kicking off approximately with the Dave Brubeck Quartet's seminal tour of Poland in 1958, three years after the ban on jazz had been lifted by the country's ruling Communist Party. For Stańko, aged ...
Ill Considered: Precipice
by Chris May
The British pianist John Tilbury believes that some free-improv musicians play for too long without pausing for literal or metaphorical breath and, to make matters worse, do not listen hard enough to their bandmates. How right he is. Tilbury has not named names, but many AAJers could surely suggest some. Tilbury recommends that improvising musicians should ...
