Sommaire pour August 2025 de Jazzwise

As the summer heat continues – and as festival season gets into full swing – jazz finds itself caught between happy go lucky nostalgia and a more serious, earnest artfulness. The number of tribute albums or anniversary-inspired projects seems to grow each month. One of this issue’s featured artists, Oscar Peterson, is a prime example of populist appeal underpinned by his celebrated technical flair. It’s a balancing act that some excel at, such as this issue’s cover star, Kurt Elling, who combines a love of literature and verse with an astonishing voice to elevate the entertaining elements of his craft to lofty heights. Yet, by his own admission, he also named an album by his project with Charlie Hunter, Guilty Pleasures, for those less high minded selections in his pop,…

Discus Music, the independent label founded by saxophonist and electronic musician Martin Archer and known for its progressive jazz, electronic and improv releases, celebrates 35 years in business this year. Discus is also set to pass another milestone with the number of CD releases set to exceed the 200 mark later this year, making it one of the UK’s largest and longest-lasting independent music labels. Archer says of the label’s beginnings: “I originally started the label as a home for my own releases, plus those of fellow Sheffielder Mick Beck, basically because I’m prolific and varied in my own recorded music and I didn’t want anyone else telling me what I could or couldn’t do. For a few years I kept it like that as I didn’t really want the…

The sight and sound of Miles Davis will be brought to life in a new theatre show, simply titled MILES, at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival at the Summerhall Arts, Tech Cube from 31 July to 25 August. A fusion of live jazz and theatre exploring the life, legend, and legacy of Miles, the show delves into the “creative chaos” behind the making of Kind of Blue, mixing live jazz and 'multi-rolling' performance. Leading UK-based trumpeter Jay Phelps will provide a live underscore to the drama, with actor Benjamin Akintuyosi (making his professional debut) portraying a host of characters in the show – including Davis – as the production moves through time, capturing this important era in the iconic musician’s eventful career. Inspired by Davis’ autobiography, extensive research and never-before…

Igor Stravinsky’s goddaughter, Eve Babitz, once mused that, “Death has always been the last word in people having fun without you.” But what if people had been having fun without you while you were alive? That was the fate of pianist Mike Taylor during his final years. Once described by Melody Maker as looking like a bank clerk and acting like a mystic, during his latter years he divested himself of footwear, communicated by hand gesture, walked around London tapping a bongo drum and otherwise fulfilled the role of a vagrant. He had also formed a close association with LSD and certain Class A drugs and chain smoked cannabis. “The last time I saw him,” said Dave Tomlin, the saxophonist on Taylor’s debut album Pendulum, “he was walking barefoot in…

Imet Oscar Peterson. A couple of times. I was a teenager at the time, and queued to have my programme signed after the concert. He was a big man and even sitting, he dominated his dressing room. I remember he had exceptionally long fingers and he signed his name with a flourish in elegant American cursive handwriting. He graciously thanked me for coming ‘to our concert’. He said he hoped to see me next time. I promised faithfully he would. I left the theatre walking on air. At the time, the best seats in the house cost £1 and even in the gods (price: 45p), an Oscar Peterson concert could be an overwhelming experience. It was easy to believe he was the world’s greatest jazz pianist because he took virtuosity…

Elemental Mack Avenue 12141 (CD, LP, DL) Dee Dee Bridgewater (v) and Bill Charlap (p). Rec. February 2025 Three-times Grammy winner singer, songwriter, Tony Award winning actress and NEA Jazz Master, Dee Dee Bridgewater’s career may be full of accomplishment, but she has never come up with an album like this. Now 75, her voice is a marvel, and with the great Bill Charlap’s piano accompaniment she approaches eight standards in a way none of her recorded work prepares you for. In 1998 her tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, Dear Ella, won her a Grammy Award, but now she has taken a leaf out of the late Betty Carter’s book, and reimagined each song in a highly creative ways. For example, you will never have heard a version of Duke Ellington’s…

New Vienna: At the Musikverein, 2016 ECM 2850 (CD, LP, DL) EDITOR’S CHOICE Keith Jarrett (p). Rec. 9 July 2016 It was a salutary reminder to us, the audience, of the stress and strain an artist operating at the highest level of jazz endures when Keith Jarrett tragically suffered a stroke in 2017. We pay our money at the box office, and the expectation is of a spontaneously conceived performance commensurate with the artist’s towering profile in the music. Then he has to do the same thing again the next night, another concert hall, maybe another country, creating something new, fresh and unheard yet again. Jarrett gave his all, every time he sat at the piano. He was sometimes perplexed that his audience on occasion seemed unable to understand the…

Acid Funk MAMAYO Records MAMA_00004 (CD, DL) Yolanda Charles (b, v), Nick Linnik (g, ky), Hamish Balfour (ky), Laurie Lowe (d), Paris Ruel and Adeola Shyllon (v). Rec. date not stated Shri Singing Bass Self-release (DL) Shri Sriram (fretless b, perc, bansuri, effects, v). Rec. date not stated Bass, it seems, is back on top. That’s certainly the case from these two distinctly different but equally well-crafted and imaginatively executed bass-led albums. The first comes from internationally acclaimed session bassist Yolanda Charles. Among an elite coterie of low-enders, Charles’ versatility has seen herwork with everyone from Paul Weller, Robbie Williams and latterly Has Zimmer (among many others) over a 30-year career, but Project PH is her new focus, having ditched the session work in 2022 and gigged in this killer…

Quartet (England) 1985 Bandcamp (DL) Anthony Braxton (as, ss, f), Marilyn Crispell (p), Mark Dresser (b) and Gerry Hemingway (d). Rec. 1985 Anthony Braxton is rightly seen as one of the most cerebral of improvising artists, especially given the richness of his concepts. But these performances from a UK tour in the mid-1980s make it abundantly clear that the Braxton intellect is also deployed to create sensations that are also thrillinglyvolcanic in energy. The opening sequence of ‘Composition 69B/60/110A/34’ is a case in point. There is such ferocity of attack at high tempo that the band comes across as a strange hybrid of agitated marching band and hyper-kinetic R&B combo juddering its way from the 1950s to the 2000s. Braxton’s searing tone, the precise stop-time of the rhythm section and…

Dim Lit Edition EDNLP1263 (2 LP, DL) Held on the Tips of Fingers Edition EDNLP 1264 (LP, DL) Seb Rochford (d), Tom Herbert (b), Mark Lockheart (ts), Pete Wareham (ts), Leafcutter John (elec) plus guests. Rec. dates not stated Might I suggest an alternative ‘Golden Age’ of British jazz to the ones regularly talked about? From 2003 onwards, there was something for a while that was dubbed Britjazz - as acid jazz was lifted tongue-in-cheek from mid-1980s acid house, so too Britjazz from mid-90s Britpop. Although it was the jazz vocal revivalists such as Jamie Cullum that first burst onto the mainstream market, it was the youthful so-called jazz punk bands from the F-IRE Collective’s Acoustic Ladyland, Fraud and Ingrid Laubrock Quartet through to Led Bib, Trio VD and Get…

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It’s not often we get to listen to something this old, but the blues singer Mamie Smith was the first person to record alongside a jazz backing. There are doubtless those who would doubt her precedence, but of course that discussion soon gets bogged down in definitions: “What is a blues singer?” and “What is a jazz backing?” Musician/historian Allen Lowe’s vast anthology That Devilin’ Tune drew attention to songs called 'rags' and 'blues' recorded in the 1910s by white vaudeville performers such as Stella Mayhew (born 1874–1934), Nora Bayes (1880–1928) and Sophie Tucker (1886–1966). Mamie Smith (1891-1946) was the first black female singer on record, though she too had been in vaudeville since at least 1913, when she arrived in New York from Ohio. She obviously moved in the…

Blue Lab Beats’ David Mrakpor (pictured, left) headlines the jazz stage this year at Twickenham’s annual High Tide Music Festival. The jazz stage is once again curated by the Off the Rails jazz club, which is based just up the road in Richmond. As well as multi-instrumentalist Mrakpor – who’s known for his virtuosity across vibes, keys, bass, guitar and drums – the remaining festival lineup consists of drummer Rod Youngs and his Quintet, featuring the music of Max Roach; Mr Kicks, a swing and latin band led by vocalist Peter Jones, with Anthony Kerr on vibraphone; singer Luna Cohen with her Brazilian Quartet; and a fusion trio led by young keyboard prodigy Cenk Esen. The free-entry festival, now in its sixth year, takes place on Sunday 27 July. It…

Affirmations: Live at Blue Note New York New Soil NSO136D (LP, DL) EDITOR’S CHOICE Theon Cross (tba), Isaiah Collier (ts), Nikos Ziarkas (g, el b) and James Russell Sims (d). Rec. 3 July 2023 Theon Cross’ first live album is a major statement, the UK tuba revolutionary taking the opportunity of his Blue Note club debut to call a one-off London-Chicago summit, inviting the latter’s rising sax star Isaiah Collier and drummer James Russell Sims to join his regular guitarist Nikos Ziarkas (echoing urban links pioneered in 2018 on Makaya McCraven’s Where We Come From (Chicago x London Mixtape)). Manhattan precedents from Coltrane and Rollins’ hallowed Village Vanguard albums on are implicitly acknowledged with the added frisson of a rare and triumphant British breakthrough, during one of those otherwise ephemeral…

Live From Death Row Self-release/Freedom Fest (CD, DL) EDITOR’S CHOICE Keith Lamar (spoken word), Albert Marques (p), Nia Drummond (v), Matthew Garrison (el b), Milena Casado (flhn), Elsa Nilsson (f), Caroline Davis (as), Roy Nathanson (bs, as), Keyanna Hutchinson (g) and Zack O’Farrill (d). Rec. September 2023 Jazz artists have a long history of engagement with prison populations, from workshops to concerts. But a collaboration between an inmate awaiting execution and a group of improvising musicians has a particular sense of both urgency and poignancy. Keith Lamar, an innocent man who has been in solitary confinement for almost three decades with the threat of a lethal injection hanging over him, performs spoken word over the phone while a band led by pianist Albert Marques plays at the renowned Shapeshifter Lab…

First Meeting: Live at Dizzy’s Club 5Passion Records (2 CD, DL) EDITOR’S CHOICE Gonzalo Rubalcaba (p), Chris Potter (ts, ss), Larry Grenadier (b) and Eric Harland (d). Rec. 25-28 August 2022 Havana-born pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s latest release finesses his Cuban roots into the demands of a powerhouse contemporary fusion group. Rubalcaba and reeds virtuoso Chris Potter have ample room to stretch out, and Larry Grenadier and Eric Harland on bass and drums deliver high energy, intuitive support. Most impressive, though, are the band’s internal dynamics, grasp of form and ability to conjure light and shade on the fly. The album’s six tracks were selected from the group’s live debut, a four-night engagement in the opulent setting of Dizzy’s Club, NYC. That opulence is reflected in the rich detail and focus…

The John Cameron Quartet Off Centre Deram 6597998 (LP, DL) John Cameron (p), Harold McNair (as, ts, f), Danny Thompson (b) and Tony Carr (d). Rec. 22 February 1969 When the usual roll-call of jazz musicians who were a part of what is now regarded as ‘The Golden Era of British Jazz’, roughly from the early 1960s to the early 70s, chances are that John Cameron will not be among the first names mentioned. It is fair to say he had an elliptical relationship with jazz. Although he adored the music, and he was from jazz-loving parents, when he came down from Cambridge, his day job was working with folk crossover artists such as Donovan and Julie Felix, and on television, which was finally coming into its own at the…

Classic Vanguard Jazz Piano Sessions Mosaic MD-6-281 (6 CD) Ray Bryant, Sir Charles Thompson, Bobby Henderson, Mel Powell, Ellis Larkins (p), Buck Clayton, Ruby Braff, Al Mattaliano (t), Henderson Chambers (tb), Edmond Hall, Peanuts Hucko (cl), Paul Quinichette, Nick Caizza (ts), Freddie Green, Skeeter Best, Steve Jordan, Tommy Kay (g), Tommy Bryant, Walter Page, Aaron Bell, Arnold Fishkin, Oscar Pettiford (b), Jo Jones, Jimmy Crawford, Bobby Donaldson (d). Rec. 30 December 1953; 22 January 17 and 24 August 1954; 16 and 17 February, 19 October 1955; 27 November 1956; 30 April 1958 Mosaic’s masterly two-part Vanguard inventory continues (and concludes) with this piano-prominent 6CD box set. The planned corollary to the justly celebrated small group compendium reviewed in Jazzwise 306 (May 2025), Mosaic-Vanguard Mark 2 restores to circulation two exceptional…

DR Guitar Strings Dragon Skin+ As players of string instruments will know, changing a set of strings will invariably create a different feel to the fingers, but will also change the tonal DR complexities to the sonic response. DR will always be remembered as the string of choice for that maestro of the electric bass, Jack Bruce. As both a music scholar and an experienced bass player on both the double bass and the electric instrument, Bruce must have been well acquainted with the variations in the tonal colour and feel of strings, and would no doubt have searched out what he considered to be the very best all round string. Since those heady days, both technology and DR have moved forward apace with the release of the company’s latest…

The BBC Proms head to the North East this summer for a number of shows, including a special regional edition of ’Round Midnight, the weekday BBC Radio 3 show presented by saxophonist/MC Soweto Kinch, which will be recorded at The Fire Station music venue in Sunderland on 24 July. The event is part of the city’s Year Of Music – which sees Sunderland join the global network of Music Cities, including Berlin, Brussels and Sydney – with a year-long celebration of its musical heritage and talent across gigs, festivals and educational workshops. This edition of ’Round Midnight will include live music from Grammy-nominated trumpeter Theo Croker, who'll perform tracks from his hotly-anticipated new album Dream Manifest; plus a live set from pianist Joe Webb and his Trio, celebrating the music…

The last time I saw Naïssam Jalal perform was in Brussels last October, in celebration of her release Healing Rituals. Her ability to convey the ineffable nuances of our shared human experience, through both her compositions and playing, captivated the audience entirely, and her set ended with a standing ovation. Not so many months later, the French-Syrian flautist, bandleader, and composer has just released her tenth album, Souffles (which translates in English as 'breaths'). This follow-up sees her exploring the intimacy of the duo setting with eight different wind instrumentalists, trading ideas through 'breaths', with the likes of Emile Parisien, Sylvain Rifflet, and the great Archie Shepp. Jalal is going from strength to strength as an artist, and it feels like her activities in the past year alone would be…

Olga Amelchenko Howling Silence Edition Records EDN1274 (CD, LP, DL) Olga Amelchenko (as), Matthew Stevens (g), Enzo Carniel (p) Etienne Renard (b) and Jesus Vega (d). Rec. date not stated Olga Amelchenko was born in Russia, schooled in Cologne and Berlin where she released her debut in 2018, before moving to Paris the following year whereupon the 37-year-old has been building a reputation for her composing prowess as well as her intensely felt, poised alto sax playing. Now she releases her debut for the UK’s Edition Records, telling stories on her alto through song-like compositions that combine folk, ‘blues’ feeling, artmusic and rock while breaking out into a language more related to contemporary post-bop sax when extending her compositions through improvisation. The best-known name in her current quintet is the…

Jasper Høiby Fellow Creatures We Must Fight Edition Records EDN1279 (CD, LP, DL) Jasper Høiby (b), Alex Hitchcock (s), Ketija Ringa Karahona (f), Saied Silbak (oud), Xavi Torres (p) and Luca Caruso (d). Rec. date not stated The Danish-born, London-based double bassist Jasper Høiby achieved recognition on the international jazz scene through the success of his band Phronesis, a standout, original, award-winning contemporary UK-Scandi piano trio that disbanded in 2020 to allow its members to freely pursue their own projects outside of the band. Høiby hasn’t been at all quiet on that front. But perhaps he’s missing Phronesis just a bit, as his current collective Fellow Creatures, whose eponymous album was released in 2016, have a new one, We Must Fight, that revisits a small selection of the compositions he…

In.Sight GroundUp Music GUM725FM (CD, LP, DL) Fabia Mantwill (v, s), Jochen Neuffer (cond), Anne-Sophie Bereuter, Luiza Labouriau, Marit Behnke, Annabelle Dugast, Julia Czerniawska, Almut Wolfart, Johanna Hempen, Valerie Leopold, Leonie Flaksman, Christina Döring, Çiğdem Tunçelli (vn), Alexina Hawkins, Marc Kopitzki, Yağmur Atagür, Johann Vincent Slawinsk (vla), Liron Yariv, Tabea Schrenk, Mireia Peñalver (clo), Tilmann Dehnhard (f, as), Matthew Halpin (ts, f, cl), Daniel Buch (bs, bcl), Jo Hermans, Johannes Böhmer, (tp, flhn), Jan Landowski (tb), Tobias Herzog, (btb, tba), Teresa Emilia Raff (hp), David Soyza (vb, mba), Charis Karantzas (g), Igor Spallati (b), Marcio Doctor (perc), Fabian Rösch (d). Soloists: Kurt Rosenwinkel (g), Anat Cohen (cl), Roosevelt Collier (lap steel g), Momi Maiga (kora), Goran Stevanovich (acc) and Morris Kliphuis (frhn). Rec. date not stated Composer, arranger, vocalist and…

Painter Of The Invisible Changu/Bandcamp (CD, DL) Jaleel Shaw (as), Lawrence Fields (p), Sasha Berliner (vb), Lage Lund (g), Ben Street (b) and Joe Dyson (d). Rec. 2022 Saxophonist Jaleel Shaw has been a notable presence on the American and international jazz scene for the past two decades, impressing as a sideman with bands such as The Cookers. Yet his work as a leader has also been impressive and this new CD, comprising only original pieces, sees him peak as a composer. Shaw is an excellent alto player but like one of his primary role models Kenny Garrett he also draws on tenor innovator John Coltrane in terms of the nobility of both his sound and melodies, which are consistently appealing. Largely rooted in straightahead vocabulary Shaw pens themes that…

Jazz Patterns Real Gone Music RGM 1946 (LP) Joe Henderson (ts), Woody Shaw (t), George Cables (el p), Ron McClure (b, el b), Lenny White (d) and Tony Waters (perc). Rec. September 1970 In these days of over-trumpeted ‘lost tapes’ discoveries and jazz-bait repackagings, this in an issue refreshing in the extreme. Or rather, reissue. Originally released as a blink-and-you’ll miss-it LP by the budget-line Everest label in the early 1980s, its contents have a curiously convoluted history. Comprising three ‘out-takes’ from saxophonist Henderson’s 1970 Milestone album If You’re Not Part of The Solution, You’re Part of The Problem, apparently sold off by Milestone’s boss Orrin Keepnews for goodness knows what reason, the resulting LP, erroneously co-credited to Henderson’s sideman Shaw and with woefully inaccurate tune identification, a duff cover…

Artie Shaw: Icon of Swing Barnett Singer and Jesse Read McFarland Publishers PB £28.99 This new biography of the great clarinetist and bandleader draws on conversations between coauthor Singer and Artie Shaw, during the 1970s and 80s, starting some 20 years or so after Shaw stopped playing for good. Thus, the closing section of the text sheds new light on Shaw’s prolonged retirement, and his literary and other aspirations. Preceding this is a survey of Shaw’s recorded output, which focuses primarily on his first great band of the late 1930s, his re-formed unit (with strings) in 1940-41, and his immediate postwar band. Other areas of his work are covered, but it is clearly Singer and Read’s view that these periods allowed Shaw to create his greatest (and most diverse) musical…

BBC RADIO 2 88-91 FM and DAB Jamie Cullum show (Tues, 9pm) BBC RADIO 3 90-93 FM and DAB 'Round Midnight (Mon-Fri 11.30pm) Jazz Record Requests (Sun, 4pm) BBC RADIO 6 MUSIC DAB Gilles Peterson, Sat 3pm JAZZ FM DAB, Sky, Alexa, smartphone, tablet and online at jazzfm.com (Mon – Fri) 6.30am-10am Jazz FM Breakfast with Nigel Williams, 10am-2pm Danielle Perry, 2pm-6pm Afternoon drive with Simon Philips, 6pm-7pm Jazz FM’s Greatest, 7pm-9pm Jazz FM’s Dinner Jazz with Mark Walker. (Mon) 9pm-10pm Future Jazz with Ruth Fisher; 10pm-midnight Late Nite with China Moses. (Tues) 9pm-10pm Jazz Travels with Rouhangeze Baichoo; 10pm-midnight Late Night with China Moses. (Wed) 9pm-10pm Jazztronic with Dom Servini; 10pm-midnight Late Night with China Moses. (Thur) 9pm-10pm The British Jazz Show with Helen Mayhew; 10pm-midnight Late Night with…

Write in to us here at Letters Dept, Jazzwise Magazine, St Jude’s Church, Dulwich Road, London SE24 0PB or email letters@jazzwise.com Raspberry delight! As usual, issue 308 (July) was packed with commendable features and interviews, but for me the highlight had to be Chris Welch’s gloriously enthusiastic review of Tubby Hayes’ Antibes ‘62. We all know the history of jazz criticism is littered with overzealous opinions, positive or negative, which rarely stand up to scrutiny. Nowadays (and probably for the best overall), critics tend to take a more considered and less self-important stance. But surrounded by this wholly justifiable caution, it’s sometimes easy to forget that jazz is frequently a music of joy, and Chris’ review was a refreshing reminder of this. The euphoria he experienced listening to the music…