Features

Majid Derakhshani profile

Iranian composer/instrumentalist Majid Derakhshani creates cutting edge world music infused with an improvisational jazz edge has joined forces with virtuoso soprano Zohreh Jooya.

Diana Krall - Little Girl Blue

Diana Krall hates labels as she detests the feeling of being boxed in. Embarrassed at being thought of as a new Ella Fitzgerald, she tells Jane Cornwell how she has moved on from the last, deeply felt album of songs many of which were co-written with husband Elvis Costello. It’s time instead to embrace again her roots, to explore richly satisfying jazz standards such as ‘Day in, Day Out’, ‘Exactly Like You’ and ‘From This Moment On’, the title track of the new album out this month, co-produced...

Soweto Kinch - B Is For Birmingham

Multi-award wining alto saxophonist and MC Soweto Kinch burst on to the jazz scene in 2003 when his album Conversations With The Unseen was released. It marked an updated twenty first century consciousness for a new generation of young black British jazz musicians who were in the process of identifying their own musical identity. The Birmingham-based player openly name checked and drew upon the pre-Windrush generation and beyond of jazz musicians who played in British clubs and dance halls in...

EST - Polyphonic spree

EST return this month with their tenth album, their first since the live version of Viaticum was issued as a special package last year along with the original studio album. Such a remarkable record company response was indicative of the initial album’s popularity, with strong demand in the UK and many other parts of Europe. So much for the album’s title tease that the group was performing its last rites. The group over more than a decade has achieved extraordinary levels of success for a jazz...

Bennie Maupin - Dark side of the sun

Penumbra is the long awaited new album by Bennie Maupin, best known for his work on Head Hunters and Bitches Brew. The saxophonist and bass clarinettist talks to Tom Barlow about why his new album has taken so long, his Nichiren Daishonin Buddhist beliefs, recollections of Eric Dolphy and mentor Yusef Lateef

Jack DeJohnette - Once in a lifetime

The latest project for drummer Jack DeJohnette is a live album Trio Beyond: Saudades based on a tribute project to fellow drummer Tony Williams’ Lifetime, a group that was at the forefront of the jazz-rock revolution in the late 1960s. DeJohnette teams up with organist Larry Goldings and guitarist John Scofield for the album. Stuart Nicholson talks to Jack about Tony Williams and recalls Jack’s tenure with Miles Davis especially the sessions in Washington DC recorded at the Cellar Door club and...

John McLaughlin - To the power of zen

John McLaughlin draws on the energy of the music he created with the Mahavishnu Orchestra to weld it on to everything that has gone since for his eagerly awaited “zen” project. With its hard driving, abrasive edge at times, it is hardly a fluffy product of some dreamy new age. While there are respectful nods to esteemed colleagues such as Wayne Shorter and Michael Brecker, the spiritual strength of the Dali Lama informs McLaughlin’s concept as the guitarist hits new improvisational peaks and...

Kenny Garrett - Chinese Whispers

Kenny Garrett is forever etched on the jazz imagination for his touring and recording with Miles Davis in the last period of the trumpeter’s life. Garrett and Miles made the most unlikely songs work. Long since a leader of distinction with many albums under his belt, Garrett made a creative leap of considerable audacity some years ago when he started to incorporate Chinese music into his vision of jazz, moving away from Coltrane tributes and a funkier direction. Andy Robson talks to the alto...

Tomasz Stanko - Far Off

Blues-drenched, free jazz legend Tomasz Stanko knows Ornette’s Coleman’s tune ‘Lonely Woman’ like some people know Lennon and McCartney’s’ ‘Let It Be’. For him it’s the kind of music that is key to his interior musical soundtrack. Over the years he has led his own bands in Poland, influenced initially heavily by the man from Fort Worth. But Stanko importantly became a member of pianist/composer Krzysztof Komeda’s group and later in his career worked extensively with the distinguished...

Martin Speake

With the ECM release of his new album, Change of Heart, altoist Martin Speake jumps categories from “man most likely” to “ascending star”. It’s one of those records that has the capacity to define a career. With a dream band of Paul Motian on drums, Bobo Stenson on piano and Mick Hutton on bass, it’s also the fruition of a long-term dream that began 14 years ago. Interview: Duncan Heining

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