Results for "Yazz Ahmed"

Yazz Ahmed

Yazz Ahmed is a British-Bahraini trumpet player and composer who seeks to blur the lines between jazz, electronic sound design, bringing together the sounds of her mixed heritage. Her music has been described as ‘psychedelic Arabic jazz, intoxicating and compelling’. In recent years she has led her various ensembles in concerts around the UK and abroad, including performances in New York, Toronto, Kuwait, Algiers, Berlin, Köln, Paris, Istanbul, Tunis and Amsterdam, and at major festivals such as WOMAD, Molde Jazz, Pori Jazz and Love Supreme. Yazz has also recorded and performed with Radiohead, Lee Scratch Perry, Nile Rodgers, ABC, Swing Out Sister, Joan as Police Woman, Tarek Yamani, Amel Zen and toured the world with These New Puritans

Chris May’s Best Releases Of 2020

By CHRIS MAY

Not the best year for live gigs in London, but Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra just made it under the wire, lighting up the Jazz Cafe in late January. Rather like Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Sosimi's band has form as an incubator of young talent. A recent star in the making was trumpeter Ife Ogunjobi, who has ...

Johanna Burnheart: Techno Jazz Shines A Light: New Directions In Music

By CHRIS MAY

A relatively new name on London's alternative jazz scene, the German-born violinist, vocalist and composer Johanna Burnheart has made a rapid ascent since leaving the city's Guildhall School of Music & Drama in 2018. She has played on three of the scene's benchmark albums--spiritual-jazz band Maisha's There Is A Place (Brownswood, 2018), trombonist Rosie Turton's 5ive ...

Johanna Burnheart: Burnheart

By CHRIS MAY

The violin has an eventful history in jazz. But it is still a niche instrument, despite a line of singular players stretching back to Stephane Grappelli and Stuff Smith (who deserves some bonus points for composing the immortal “If You're A Viper"). There are no schools of jazz violinists, simply a succession of one-off stylists, with ...

Various Artists: Blue Note Re:imagined

By CHRIS MAY

The idea—honouring Blue Note's legacy while mapping out a possible future—promises much. The actuality is a curate's egg. The sixteen artists each interpreting a classic Blue Note-associated tune are not, as the label's American publicity has it, among the London scene's “most exciting young talents." A few are, but not many. The sixteen are instead an ...

Samuel Hällkvist: Epik Didaktik Pastoral

By CHRIS MAY

Swedish guitarist Samuel Hällkvist's rifftastic electric trio plays an exhilarating mixture of jazz, prog rock and minimalist music. Riffs aside, the key ingredients are cross rhythms, rhythmic displacement and lavish servings of MIDI-enabled keyboards and tuned percussion. The result is heavy on the tension and light on the release. A close comparator is Swiss keyboard player ...

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 ...

Agile Experiments: Alive In The Empire

By IAN PATTERSON

The clue is the name. Take a handful of musicians, place them in front of an audience and say “ready, steady go." Since starting Agile Experiments in 2015, multi-instrumentalist Dave De Rose has marshaled dozens of musicians for his sonic experiments, whereby small combos play entirely improvised one-hour gigs. Alive in the Empire, the fifth release ...

Olive Branch or Pat Nip?

By PATRICK BURNETTE

After the “politicapocalypse" (Mike's coinage--ask him) of the previous episode, the boys decide to gently transition away from that minefield by looking at two artists more obliquely engaged with political discourse and two artists more or less removed from it entirely (by temperament and timing). To soothe Pat's scalded nerves, Mike brings a couple “cool" cats ...

A Jazz Immuno-Booster: Part 2

By LUDOVICO GRANVASSU

Our sequestration continues. But so does this mix-tape series featuring music selected by jazz musicians to whom we have asked to share one song they rely on when they need to be uplifted, or soothed, and to make us fly beyond the walls that keep us protected from the greatest pandemic of our generation.