Results for "Martin Longley"
Jazz Juniors 2023

by Martin Longley
Cricoteka Kraków, Poland October 12-15, 2023 Your scribe views his regular documentation of the annual Jazz Juniors competition-and-festival as an opportunity to insert a few rogue words once the heavy doors of official judgement have swung shut. Never a sitting judge, he wields his bloodied quill after the event, ...
Ostrava Days 2023

by Martin Longley
Klub Parník, Plato, Triple Hall Karolina, etc. Ostrava, Czech Republic August 28-September 2, 2023 Ostrava Days happens once every two years, mostly dedicated to the well-being of new music, composed for varying sizes of ensembles, right up to a fully-bloated orchestra. Sometimes, though, works will be penned for mere solo ...
WOMAD 2023

by Martin Longley
WOMAD Charlton Park, Malmesbury England July 27-30 2023 What shall we do, if the first bands play at 1pm each day, at this, the UK's oldest and greatest global music festival? Why, we shall Taste The World, investigating a cookery demonstration performance that begins daily at noon! ...
Gent Jazz 2023

by Martin Longley
Gent Jazz Festival Gent, Belgium July 9-15, 2023 It looked dire in 2022. The Gent Jazz festival, a two-decade integral element in the cultural life of this wondrous Belgian city, was declared bankrupt, along with Jazz Middelheim in Antwerp, which had an even more august history. Amazingly, it's still here ...
Jazz Export Days 2023

by Martin Longley
Jazz Export Days Jazz Sous Les Pommiers Coutances, France May 15-17, 2023 Jazz Export Days was a music biz event inserted into an actual public festival, the long-running (42 years!) and highly-regarded Jazz Sous Les Pommiers, in Coutances, a small town in the north-west Normandy region. It's organised by ...
Jazzkaar 2023

by Martin Longley
Jazzkaar Tallinn, Estonia April 23-30, 2023 Jazzkaar has now lost two days, this exceptional Estonian festival running at eight rather than ten, but still remaining epic when compared to most others. The opening Sunday might have only featured a single concert, but as the fresh week progressed, the scale incrementally increased, hitting ...
Jazzkaar Interviews: Kirke Karja

by Martin Longley
Estonian pianist Kirke Karja has regularly appeared at the Jazzkaar festival in Tallinn, customarily performing in surprising settings, always delivering a fresh band combination, or a new set of music, or altering ratios between improvisation and composition, acoustic or electric palettes. During the last two years she has a.) been discovered by the rest of the ...
Moers Festival Interviews: Kenny Garrett

by Martin Longley
The release of Kenny Garrett's Sounds From The Ancestors album (Mack Avenue, 2021) has reinvigorated his live performances, as the saxophonist tours heartily with an expanded band that's heavy on the Afro-Latin percussion. In recent times, multi-instrumentalist Garrett has been gigging with this dedicated Sounds From The Ancestors line-up, heavily devoted to the album, but not ...
Live From Brussels: The Residents, Marco Marcelletti, Lynn Cassiers & Jean-Paul Estiévenart

by Martin Longley
The Residents Botanique jny:Brussels, Belgium January 29, 2023 Right at the start of their European tour, The Residents appeared at Botanique, a principal Brussels music venue. Calling this venture Dog Stab! 2023 strongly suggests a concern with their classic 1978 album Duck Stab! and the more recent (2020) ...
Moers Festival Interviews: Brandon Seabrook

by Martin Longley
Brandon Seabrook cultivates a forked assault on the guitar and the banjo, amplifying both of them, and negotiating their strings at high speeds, filling his playing with hyper-detailed improvisations, or constructing complex compositional strategies, frequently referred to as 'riffs.' Seabrook has long been a crucial presence on the New York City scene, whether leading his own ...