Features

Neil Cowley - Piano

David Gallant talks to the pianist about how he got started, the instruments he has played over the years and his all time favourite choice. Young meteor Cowley and his trio crescendoed on to the national jazz scene just last year with their highly acclaimed, mesmeric debut album Displaced. Cowley though has form. He played Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Queen Elizabeth Hall – aged 11! “Yeah,” says Cowley in his usual self deprecating manner. “I was nurtured by Eric Stevenson...

Gerard Presencer - Trumpet

David Gallant talks to the leading trumpeter about how he got started, the instruments he’s played over the years and his all time favourite choice. As head of the department for jazz studies at the Royal Academy of Music, Gerard Presencer believes that you need to get people’s ears working, before you get bogged down in the technicalities of jazz theory.

Laurence Cottle - Bass Guitar

David Gallant talks to the bassist and bandleader about how he got started, the instruments he has played over the years and his all time favourite choice. Cottle’s first performance was hardly an auspicious beginning to a successful musical career. “I was about two years old,” he remembers, “when I appeared out of a suitcase as my father’s ventriloquist dummy!”

Jim Mullen - Guitar

David Gallant talks to leading musicians about how they got started, the instruments they have played over the years and their all time favourite choice. Jim Mullen grew up on the East side of Glasgow in the mid-1940s. “My claim to fame is that I taught Billy Connolly the chords for ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ on the banjo,” he says with a wry chuckle. 

John Etheridge - Guitar

Picking up his first guitar in 1961, a £3 Russian acoustic "with a six inch action at the twelfth fret!" didn’t make for the best of beginnings. "That was awful," says John Etheridge with a chuckle; "I was really relieved when I found the Hofner solid body a few months later. Looking back, that Hofner was a nice guitar and I used it for a surprisingly long time."

Mark Nightingale - Trombone

David Gallant talks to the trombonist about how he got started, the instruments he has played over the years and his all time favourite choice.“I remember it being a tremendous thrill to suddenly find I could play ‘Home on the Range’ right the way through without a mistake," says Nightingale. "Those 'Tune-a-Day' books were great!"

Martin Taylor - There and Back

Guitarist Martin Taylor, one of the greatest ever UK jazz guitarists, talks to Jack Massarik about coming to terms with the death of his son Stewart, calling on the help of some of his oldest musical associates to form a new band Freternity which has managed to draw out some of Martin’s most evocative playing in years.

Medeski, Scofield, Martin and Wood - Out of the Tube

Medeski Martin and Wood, the trio that virtually invented the whole notion of the jam band, have teamed up once again with John Scofield for a joyous open ended Meters-inspired jam Out Louder. Is it a reworking of past glories or a fresh new outing together? Andy Robson finds out.

Wynton Marsalis - Plantation Polemics

With his vexed views on the subject of “tradition” Wynton Marsalis has become the epitome of the starchy jazz conservative that many would-be jazz liberals love to hate. Yet is there more to the trumpeter than grandiloquent pronouncements on the need to preserve a particular strand of the music’s history? From The Plantation To The Penitentiary, Marsalis’ new album, reminds us that he is also a fervent political commentator as well as a fine musician.

Led Bib - X-ray vision

Curiously named after the protective garment used to shield dental patients during x-rays, Led Bib is set to shake up the UK jazz scene already gravitating to a new set of rules in the wake of Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland. Led by US drummer Mark Holub the group was initially influenced by New York downtown groups of the 1980s but is just as likely to bash out post-modern version of David Bowie as it is to double think whatever John Zorn is toying with. You won’t be bored, says Daniel...

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