Features

Miles Davis

Interest in Miles Davis has never been greater and seems to increase as the years go by. This month, had he lived, would have seen his 80th year. Miles biographer George Cole investigates the possible directions Miles’ music would have taken him by talking to Jo Gelbard, Miles’ companion in the last years of his life, as well as a wide range of musicians who played with him over his final years including George Duke, Adam Holzman, Darryl Jones, Easy Mo Bee and Foley.

Dave Douglas

Trumpeter Dave Douglas’ latest work Blue Latitudes is based on a book about Captain Cook’s pioneering expeditionary voyages in the eighteenth century. He is joined by bassist Mark Dresser, percussionist Susie Ibarra and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group with the classical musicians charged by Douglas to partly improvise. Alyn Shipton catches up with Douglas, now releasing music under his own label, as he rehearses for the performances due this month

Paul Motian

The very antithesis of the power drummer, Paul Motian, revered for his work with Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett as well as his own prodigious work as a leader, turns 75 this year. Duncan Heining looks back with Motian over the highs and lows of his remarkable musical career.

Acoustic Triangle

Acoustic Triangle has quietly championed a back to basics approach in playing totally acoustically, melding jazz and classical music and, while hardly raving in the nave, completed a tour of concerts in sacred places up and down the country. Stuart Nicholson finds out what’s ahead for the trio of Malcolm Creese, Tim Garland and Gwilym Simcock as they release their latest album Resonance

Bobby Wellins

Bobby Wellins is 70 this year and to celebrate the occasion Peter Vacher chews the fat with Bobby, hearing the great tenor player’s tales of early days back in Glasgow, high jinks with Buddy Featherstonehaugh, great music with Stan Tracey and the highs and lows of drug addiction and what has often been a tough life playing jazz

Archie Shepp

Archie Shepp stands now as a totemic figure from an era in jazz history notable for its spirit of rebellion, its allegiances with the black power of the 1960s and a belief that music is part of a bigger social and political struggle. The saxophonist, in his first major interview for Jazzwise, talks to Kevin Le Gendre about the era in which he grew up, the issues he cares most for, and how he feels "the more that we’re oppressed, the more we feel the need to assert ourselves."

Shirley Horn

‘With the passing of Shirley Horn, who was born in 1934, an era ended. She was the last in line of jazz’s great female vocalists from its Golden Era’, says Stuart Nicholson. In a previously unpublished interview he made with her in Paris he pays tribute to Shirley Horn and looks back on her career and recorded legacy.

Pharoah Sanders

As the world reels from a series of natural disasters and powerful international leaders dither dangerously on the issue of climate change, many jazz artists fear for the safety of the planet. Kevin Le Gendre hears how the legendary saxophonist Pharoah Sanders is both concerned for the future of Mother Nature yet continually inspired by the environment while the adventurous trumpeter Byron Wallen explains how the earth provides magical sounds that are beyond the reach of man-made...

Billie Holiday: a turbulent life

When Stuart Nicholson’s biography of Billie Holiday was published in the USA it was nominated a "Notable Book of the Year" by The New York Times Review of Books and praised by Pulitzer Prize winner for Music, composer Ned Norem, for its musical insights. Here, prompted by the release of Verve’s Billie Holiday: The Complete Verve Studio Master Takes, Nicholson reflects on the enduring artistry of the singer they called Lady Day, talks about how he discovered some of the previously...

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