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Giant Steps: Diverse Journeys in British Jazz
by Chris May
Giant Steps: Diverse Journeys in British Jazz David Burke 240 Pages ISBN: 9781908755483 Desert Hearts 2021 David Burke's survey of British jazz musicians of colour does not begin promisingly. The first sentence of his Foreword reads: “Jazz is, of course, African-American in provenance, just as the greatest ...
Tomorrow’s Warriors: The Sound of London, Part 1
by Russell Perry
London has always been home to a thriving jazz scene. Several things distinguish that scene today—the gender and racial diversity of the players, their achievement at a young age and the wide range of musical influences from hip-hop, club sounds and the African and Caribbean diaspora. Much of this diversity has its roots in the innovative ...
Giant Steps: Diverse Journeys in British Jazz
Giant Steps: Diversity Journeys in British Jazz features conversations with many of the artists who have engineered the cultural transformation of British jazz over the past four decades. A new wave of the genre emerged in the 1980s, spearheaded by the Jazz Warriors, a collective of black musicians which launched the careers of bassist Gary Crosby, ...
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 ...
