Home » Search Center » Results: Kokoroko
Results for "Kokoroko"
Balimaya Project: When The Dust Settles
by Chris May
Formed in 2019 by London-based drummer and percussionist Yahael Camara Onono, the sixteen-piece Balimaya Project blends traditional West African Mandé music with modal jazz and other sounds out of modern Black London. The ensemble's closest comparator, albeit at some remove, is the veteran Senegalese band Orchestra Baobab who, in the 1980s, were hugely popular at home ...
Ash Walker: Astronaught
by Chris May
London DJ Ash Walker came to attention in 2019 with Aquamarine (Night Time Stories), a butterlicious mix of jazz, blues, soul, funk and dub reggae that was beyond categorisation. Astronaught is the follow-up, cut from the same cloth. Like its predecessor, it is by no stretch of the imagination a “jazz" album, however ...
Gyedu-Blay Ambolley: Gyedu-Blay Ambolley & Hi-life Jazz
by Peter Jones
This is reportedly the 35th album from Ghanaian singer/rapper/tenor saxophonist Gyedu-Blay Ambolley. But although he has toured Europe and the US extensively, he remains relatively unknown in what we call “the West." It is a situation that ought to change, and if there was any justice in the world, this is the album that would do ...
Mark Kavuma & The Banger Factory At Milton Court Concert Hall
by Chris May
Mark KavumaMilton Court Concert HallLondonNovember 18, 2022 Fittingly for one of the closing events of the 2022 London Jazz Festival, trumpeter Mark Kavuma's performance at the Barbican Centre's associate concert hall, a few hundred yards down the road from the main venue, was on an epic scale. Kavuma appeared with ...
About Antares Flare
Instrument: Band / ensemble / orchestra
Results for pages tagged "Kokoroko"...
Antares Flare
Active since:
An international sextet based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Antares Flare is making music that is as grounded in earthy rhythms as it is in sonic journeying.
Guitarist Piero Conte, the creative force behind this eclectic setup, is inspired by the entrancing sounds of the Congo rainforests but also the electro-psychedelic atmospheres of Jimi Hendrix and Clever Austin. Taking cues from Jorge Luis Borges and the magical realist movement, he creates a sound that is rebellious and decidedly modern, interspersed with moments of profound clarity.
Since their inception in 2018 the band have played various festivals and clubs in the Netherlands and Italy, also being finalists of the 2021 Erasmus Jazz Prize Competition. Their eponymous debut album was recorded at Labrstract Studio in Rome and distributed on vinyl by Amsterdam-based label Wicked Wax in 2022.
Kokoroko: Could We Be More
by Chris May
One of the features of the 2022 alternative London jazz scene is the incorporation of musical styles originating in Africa and the Caribbean, from whence a high proportion of prominent musicians on that scene trace their heritage. Not every band shares this African and/or Caribbean dimension but the majority do and it is one of the ...
Pori Jazz 2022
by Rob Garratt
Pori Jazz 2022 Kirjurinluoto Concert Park Pori, Finland July 14-16, 2022 If this year's 55th annual Pori Jazz festival had a “moment," it was when Immanuel Wilkins invited Shabaka Hutchings to the stage as a surprise guest for a dazzling 14-minute duet that capped the former's spellbinding set, ...
Beyond Afrobeat: Kokoroko's World of Black Music
by Peter Jones
London-based octet Kokoroko has been led by trumpeter-vocalist Sheila Maurice-Grey since she formed it in 2014 with percussionist Onome Edgeworth. The band's original idea was to update Afrobeat for a 21st century audience, inspired by the likes of Ebo Taylor, Tony Allen, and Fela Kuti. It was the extraordinary public reaction to their first release--a single ...
Michael Leonhart, Marta Sanchez, Mostly Other People Do the Killing, Alabaster Deplume & More
by Ludovico Granvassu
It's February. The Winter Olympics are well under way and there are so many new and upcoming releases in 2022 that we can fill an entire show with them... Starting and ending with two Orchestras: Michael Leonhart's mighty ensemble and their upcoming stunner, The Normyn Suites, and Paul Wacrenier's Healing Orchestra, a band with a mission: ...
