Features

Keith Tippett - The Tipping Point

There are echoes of Centipede, that remarkable super sized free jazz orchestra, in the release this month of Keith Tippett’s Tapestry orchestra recording Live At The Le Mans (First Weaving). With an extraordinary coming together of heavyweight British and European free improvisers and the added fizz of a live performance, the old spirit of the great pianist Keith Tippett is there for one and all nearly 40 years after his career in music first began. Duncan Heining talks to Tippett about a...

Jonathan Gee - Piano

“All the family plays piano,” says Gee, who grew up in an environment saturated with the various colours of classical music. “My grandfather, Harold C. Gee, was a professional classical violinist, who played on the BBC twice a week from 1940-65 and I was brought up on the likes of Bartok, Sibelius, Shostokovich and Britten.”

Bob Brookmeyer - The Art of Swing

Best-known for his work with the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, Sextet and Concert Jazz Band, for his time with Stan Getz, his quintet with Clark Terry, and the trio with Jim Hall and Jimmy Giuffre, trombonist Bob Brookmeyer is in the UK for a rare series of gigs this month. Alyn Shipton talks to him

Charles Mingus - Triumph of the Underdog

Charles Mingus, had he lived, would have been 85 this year. Despite the fact that he is no longer around, his music has an uncanny longevity and his music is more influential today than it has ever been. In a special feature, Jazzwise this month looks at the life and music of Charles Mingus as the repertory band named after him, the Mingus Big Band, prepares to come to the UK for a major tour and a raft of reissues are released.

John Surman - Spaces and Places

John Surman is one of the totemic figures of British jazz, one of the select number revered and admired in Britain and abroad, both for his technical skills and for his audacious approach to jazz and improvised music. His latest album The Spaces In Between is just one of a raft of new projects that Surman is involved with in the coming year, showing a wide range of Surman’s interests. Interview: Duncan Heining 

Henry Lowther - Trumpet

David Gallant talks to the trumpeter about how he got started, the instruments he has played over the years and his all time favourite choice. “You know I played Woodstock as the first gig of an American tour with the Keefe Hartley band,” says Lowther, whose CV links him with most of the major jazz and blues artists and musical events of the last 40 years. “The only other trumpet player at the gig was Sly Stone’s sister!”

Steve Lodder - Keyboards

David Gallant talks to the keyboardist about how he got started, the instruments he has played over the years and his all time favourite choice. “For me, everything starts with Bach,” says Steve Lodder. “He laid out the seeds for everything that would happen in the next two hundred years and it’s just fascinating to see it’s all in there”. Lodder remembers “messing around” on the family’s piano from the age of five of six. “My earliest memory is of my father deciding that we needed a new...

Phil Robson - Guitar

David Gallant talks to guitarist Phil Robson about how he got started, the instruments he has played over the years and his all time favourite choice. “You’ve just caught me”, says Robson. “I’m off to play at the 55 in New York next week. I feel really honoured, all the greats have played there and then I’m off to California to do the Monterey Jazz Festival”.

Alec Dankworth - Double Bass

Alec Dankworth’s journey to the nether regions of the bass clef began in 1974 when “the bass player left the band I was playing in.” Dankworth had started out on the guitar, but because his dad John, the alto saxophonist and composer, “had this very strange bass lying around the house” he felt almost obliged to pick it up and lay down the lower line.

Dave Green - Double Bass

David Gallant talks to the bassist who grew up next door to Charlie Watts, about how he got started, the instruments he has played over the years and his all time favourite choice. "I started as a skiffle player with some school friends when I was about 13, in the mid-to-late-50s," says Green. "It was a trio. I got a tea chest, painted it and put a broom handle on it – great fun." Green’s love of the bass however, had started well before his skiffle days. "I used to spend Sunday evenings tuning...

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