Robert Glasper’s recent double Grammy Award wins for his two Black Radio albums have capped an 11-year career that has not just seen him break through to the mainstream like few other jazz artists today, but has also seen Glasper forge deep bonds between today’s jazz, R&B and hip-hop scenes.
Since his first explosive 1969 solo album, Extrapolation, John McLaughlin has shape-shifted, chameleon-like, through the decades of jazz-rock, acoustic fusion, Indian music and gritty Hammond-driven blues.
Since landing in London a decade ago, Minnesota-born bassist Michael Janisch hasn’t done things by halves.
Liane Carroll has that rare ability to meld effortless, often transcendent vocal and piano technique, with heart stopping emotion and soul bearing power.
From awkward outsiders to international post-jazz hipsters, Get The Blessing have consistently produced noisily-nuanced yet hard to define music for 15 years now.
Manchester-born and based, trumpeter Matthew Halsall first emerged with his 2008 debut Sending My Love, standing out from the crowd with his golden tone and a glowing melodic warmth to his music.
With parallel careers spanning the last two decades saxophonist Joshua Redman and piano trio The Bad Plus have forged equally acclaimed, but distinctly separate paths in contemporary jazz.
Bassist Avishai Cohen has in the last decade of his prolific, high-level 20-year career, moved from bass hero and bandleader, into the echelons of significant stylistic innovator and powerful musical mentor.
To say Malcolm John ‘Mac’ Rebennack Jr, aka Dr John, has lived a colourful life would be something of an understatement: from spells in jail, being shot in the hand, scoring drugs and his upbringing in deepest, darkest New Orleans, he is the very embodiment of the Crescent City’s rich gumbo soul.
Diana Krall has often walked a fine line between consummate jazz performer and canny crossover artist, not least with her recent vaudeville, jazz and blues inspired album Glad Rag Doll, and now even more so with Wallflower – her classy new, string-laden record peppered with songs by The Mamas & the Papas, Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan.
