Results for "Rob Luft"

Rob Luft

Rob Luft is an award-winning 26-year-old jazz guitarist from London whose virtuosity has been compared to that of six-string legends John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola & Paco De Lucia. Praised by The Times for performances with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in 2015, who said he was destined “to achieve great things in the future”, Rob was subsequently the recipient of the 2016 Kenny Wheeler Prize from The Royal Academy of Music, and also of 2nd Prize in The 2016 Montreux Jazz Guitar Competition at the Montreux Jazz Festival. His debut album, ‘Riser’, was released on Edition Records in 2017 to widespread critical acclaim from the European jazz media

Life Is The Dancer

By ROB LUFT

Label: Edition Records
Released: 2020
Track listing: Berlin; Life Is The Dancer; All Ways Moving; One Day In Romentino; Tanpura; Synesthesia; Other Wise; Snow Country; Sad Star; Expect The Unexpected.

New Jazz From London: Top 20 Paradigm Shifting Albums

By CHRIS MAY

After a lifetime trying to get on an equal footing with its American parent, British jazz has finally come of age. Since around 2015, a community of young, London-based musicians has forged a style which, while anchored in the American tradition, reflects the Caribbean and African cultural heritages of many of its vanguard players. The scene ...

Chris Montague: Warmer Than Blood

By CHRIS MAY

Spring 2020 has produced two notable albums from British guitarists. In April we had Rob Luft's exquisite Life Is The Dancer (Edition). In May we have Chris Montague's own-name debut, Warmer Than Blood. Like Luft, Montague writes engaging tunes and both albums are engagingly melodic; Montague's arrangements, however, are more open-ended, giving the music a collective ...

Laura Jurd: Getting Elemental

By CHRIS MAY

Whatever other delights come along during 2020 in the way of great jazz albums, it is a near certainty that among the joint number ones will be To The Earth (Edition) by Dinosaur. Formed as the Laura Jurd Quartet in 2010 by students at London's Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and still led by ...

Wolfgang Muthspiel, Thana Alexa, John Zorn, John Scofield and More New Releases

By LUDOVICO GRANVASSU

Second part of our weekly exploration of brand new releases, with a special focus on guitar-centric albums [for the first part click here]. PlaylistBen Allison “Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" Mondo Jazz Theme (Self-released) 0:00 Rob Luft “Life Is the Dancer" Life is the Dancer (Edition) 0:16 Host Talks Wolfgang ...

Dinosaur: To The Earth

By CHRIS MAY

Britain's Edition label has remained independent of London's post-2015 alternative jazz scene, whose aesthetic is formed in part by the emphases of identity politics and which now, in 2020, has gone overground with the signing of three bands led by movement auteur Shabaka Hutchings to Impulse! in the US. Edition, which was founded in 2008 by ...

Rob Luft: Life Is The Dancer

By CHRIS MAY

British guitarist Rob Luft's debut album, Riser (Edition, 2017), was greeted with huge acclaim. Some observers likened his arrival to the emergence of Wes Montgomery or Pat Metheny. The music world is used to hyperbole, but for once the praise is justified. For anyone yet to hear Luft, a useful yardstick is the pianist Bill Evans: ...

Byron Wallen: Portrait

By CHRIS MAY

An all too rare event, an album from Byron Wallen. The British trumpeter is part of that cohort of musicians who immediately preceded, and continue to inspire, the young London rebels who have been renewing British jazz since around 2015. So, too, is this album's drummer, Rod Youngs. Youngs was born and raised in the US, ...

Plays Monk & Trane

By ROB LUFT

Label: Ubuntu Music
Released: 2019
Track listing: Naima; Little Melonae; Locomotive; Minor Mishap; I’ll Wait And Pray; Trinkle Trinkle; Like Sonny; ‘Round Midnight; Spring Is Here; Dreamland; Locomotive.