Home » Search Center » Results: Chris May
Results for "Chris May"
Abdullah Ibrahim: The Balance
by Chris May
Abdullah Ibrahim's discography goes back sixty years, and although there are longer periods between his releases than there used to be, Ibrahim has retained all his grit and jubilance. The pianist and composer continues to make gloriously uplifting music steeped in its South African roots, in a style which still carries echoes of his formative overseas ...
Sara Correia: Sara Correia
by Chris May
The late, great bandoneon player Ástor Piazzolla famously said: “There is not one note of happiness in the tango." That is also true of fado, tango's Portugese cousin. Both are the Latin equivalents of African American blues: intense, cathartic expressions of anguish with, in their traditional forms, precious little light at the end of the tunnel. ...
Binker Golding Quartet and Denys Baptiste Quartet at the London Saxophone Festival
by Chris May
Binker Golding Quartet / Denys Baptiste Quartet London Saxophone FestivalThe Jazz Cafe London May 23, 2019 The launch event for the 2019 London Saxophone Festival, which runs until June 16, featured two of the most edge-of-your-seat, high impact, kick-out-the-jams tenor saxophone-led bands in the recorded history of British jazz. ...
Electronic Explorations in Afro-Cuban and UK Jazz
by Chris May
Sarah Tandy, Yussef Dayes, Kevin Haynes, Adel Gomez, Feliciano Arango, Seiji Milton Court Concert Hall Electronic Explorations in Afro-Cuban and UK Jazz London May 12, 2019 Jazz and Cuban music intersections go back to the 1910s and pianist Jelly Roll Morton's embrace of what he called “the Spanish tinge." Things ...
Hugh Masekela: Masekela '66 - '76
by Chris May
Like his compatriot and close contemporary Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela has a 24-carat discography which stretches back six decades and digs deep into the taproot of jazz. Ibrahim is still with us--he has a new album scheduled for June 2019--but Masekela passed in January 2018. Among the several solid Masekela compilations on the market, this 3-CD ...
Charlie Parker: Bird: The Complete Masters 1941-1954
by Chris May
All roads lead back to Charlie Parker, and if ever a musician's recorded output is worth collecting in its entirety, it is his. Only Louis Armstrong's corpus of work is comparably important. Much of Parker's output has been made available over various box sets, of which the three most comprehensive are the 8-CD The ...
Martin Fabricius Trio: Under The Same Sky
by Chris May
The vibraphone has come a long way—technically and aesthetically—since Lionel Hampton used it in a short, improvised introduction to Louis Armstrong's “Confessin,'" recorded with Les Hite's band in 1930. Back then, it was regarded primarily as a percussion instrument, and it is still categorized as tuned-percussion in the classical music world. Hampton was the first musician ...
Organic pulse ensemble: Transcending the Sum
by Chris May
The name Organic Pulse Ensemble suggests a largish line-up, but Transcending The Sum is actually the creation of just one musician, multi-instrumentalist Gustav Horneij. Horneij does, however, definitely transcend the sum of that unitary part, overdubbing away to recreate a six, seven or eight piece band, with front line, rhythm section and all. As the cover ...
Cykada: Cykada
by Chris May
Cykada has been making waves on London's genre-melting alternative-jazz scene since 2017, but has yet to acquire a profile akin to those of some of the other bands with which its musicians are involved. These include spiritual-jazz septet Maisha and the Afrobeat-infused Ezra Collective. The release of Cykada, however, is going to strap a booster rocket ...
Infinite Spirit Music: Live Without Fear
by Chris May
Britain's Jazzman Records has form when it comes to spiritual jazz. Its series Spiritual Jazz: Modal, Esoteric and Deep Jazz, now one release away from its tenth volume, has made accessible again some of the most worthwhile but near-lost African American music of the 1970s. The label also supports modern day British musicians. Stand out home-grown ...
