Jazz
Stephan Micus - review
Since he has improvised, composed, researched and recorded almost entirely on his own for four decades, it's tempting to describe the multi-instrumentalist, singer and self-taught ethnomusicologist Stephan Micus as world music's most productive...
Vincent Peirani: Thrill Box - review
(ACT) The accordion has grown to become an important voice in the new, distinctively European styles of jazz. It has proved to be capable of a vast expressive range, with a seemingly infinite repertoire of textures and tone colours. Peirani is the...
Kurt Elling, Ronnie Scott’s, London – review
With his immaculate timing and pitch-perfect tenor, the jazz singer finds depth in even seemingly ephemeral lyrics
Paul Motian: Paul Motian - review
(ECM) A discreetly handsome edition of the kind this label does so well, in tribute to the revered percussionist and composer , who died in 2011. The package contains all six of the ECM albums under Motian's name. It reveals the growing boldness of...
Paul Motian: Paul Motian - review
(ECM) A six-CD set of Motian's work for ECM from 1972 (when he blossomed into a bandleader after years as a game-changing drummer for Bill Evans, Paul Bley and others) to 1984, when saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist Bill Frisell began a two-decade...
Trilok Gurtu: Spellbound - review
(Moosicus) Spellbound is a homage to trumpeters by Indian percussion legend Gurtu - starting with a 30-second jam with the late Don Cherry from the 1970s, and moving through originals and pieces by Cherry, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis as...
Kit Downes: Light from Old Stars - review
A meeting with a Nasa astrobiologist led to these intricate but surprisingly bluesy musings on the conundrum of stargazing at what isn't there any more, hence the title.
Robert Mitchell: The Glimpse - review
(Whirlwind) The British pianist Robert Mitchell came to wider notice in 2002 when the BBC jazz awards made him a Rising Star, but he had been imparting an original spin to diverse sources, from European classical music to funk, hip-hop and Herbie...
Phronesis - review
Long before BBC viewers started lapping up Scandinavian crime drama, the UK's more discerning music fans have been falling for Scandinavian jazz. Norway, Sweden and Denmark have produced some of the world's most compelling improvised music in recent...
Chris Biscoe Profiles Quartet: Live at Campus West - review
(Trio) On the face of it, this is an unassuming concert (captured at Herts Jazz's Welwyn HQ in 2011) mostly dedicated to respectful, straight-swinging accounts of tunes by Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus and Thelonious Monk. But the front line of Chris...