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Kit Downes: Old Stars, New Blues
by Bruce Lindsay
Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Saturday 30th April 2011. The young British pianist and composer Kit Downes has travelled to this west of England town to première his latest composition, Animation Migration, at the Playhouse Theatre. It was an unusual event for a jazz festival. Downes' band played music inspired by the story of evolution and DNA alongside ...
June Tabor, Huw Warren, Iain Ballamy: Quercus
by John Eyles
June Tabor has been superb for so long that it is easy to take her for granted as England's finest female traditional folk singer. Despite holding that status for many years, she has never seemed to rest on her laurels. Alongside the traditional folk songs on which she built her reputation, Tabor has a repertoire broad ...
Vossa Jazz 2013
by John Kelman
Vossa JazzOslo, NorwayMarch 22-24, 2013Every festival hopes to have a signature, that certain something that differentiates it from all the rest and makes it a desired destination, but few have as many things going for it as the annual Vossa Jazz Festival, now in its 40th year. It certainly may seem ...
Thomas Stronen's Time is a Blind Guide & Elephant9: Oslo, Norway, March 20-21, 2013
by John Kelman
When you've got some time to kill between two festivals--in this case, Burghausen, Germany's B-Jazz Festival and Vossa Jazz in Voss, Norway, the following weekend--there are few better places to do it than Oslo, a city that supports live music better than most cities in the world, with the possible exception of New York. Oslo's residents ...
Lauren Kinsella: In Between Every Line
by Ian Patterson
It may be that the voice is the most difficult instrument to improvise with, judging by the relatively small number of improvising vocalists out there. Jazz singers who scat are common enough, but only the best are able to breathe life into a style that has become rather formulaic over the past century. Lauren Kinsella (the ...
Mark Lockheart: Ellington in Anticipation
by John Kelman
Ellington in Anticipation isn't Mark Lockheart's first album to employ an expanded lineup; the Polar Bear/Blue Touch Paper saxophonist collaborated with Germany's WDR Big Band on 2010's Days Like These (Fuzzy Moon) and first cut his teeth in Loose Tubes, the now-legendary large UK collective of then-up-and-comers that included pianist Django Bates, saxophonist Iain Ballamy and ...
Death, Rebirth & New Revolution
by Ian Patterson
The death knell has often been sounded for jazz and many would argue that the last revolution in jazz took place as the '60s handed the baton to the '70s, with the electronic-influenced jazz typified by trumpeter Miles Davis' ground breaking albums In a Silent Way (Columbia, 1969) and Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970). Many believe that ...
Take Five Europe: January 28-February 2, 2013
by John Kelman
Take Five EuropeBore PlaceSevenoaks Weald, Kent, UKJanuary 28-February 3, 2013While solid jazz education for aspiring musicians is increasingly accessible, few programs tackle the harsh realities facing the emerging musician of the 21st century. With the dissolution of major labels, and a shift in revenue that often makes having a publicist and/or ...
Food: Mercurial Balm
by Karl Ackermann
In their sophomore outing on the ECM label, Food continues their shape-shifting evolution, both in personnel and musical outcomes. With influences of jazz, electronica and world music, UK saxophonist Iain Ballamy and Norwegian percussionist Thomas Strønen remain as the nucleus of a group that has managed to reinvent itself with each of its seven releases. Through ...
Food: Mercurial Balm
by John Kelman
While Anglo/Norwegian musical encounters have recently been on the rise--Norway's In the Country and Jaga Jazzist, for example, recently discovering respective nexus points with British pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole and the Britten Sinfonia--it's of no small significance that Food has been exploring trans-national connective threads for a considerably longer time, with its eponymous 1999 recorded ...
