Blessed with an enormous, joyful sound and the purest of tones, above all, on the tenor saxophone, Joe Lovano has not surprisingly moved to the top of the pile on the international jazz circuit in the course of his career so far.
Led Bib were one of the few bands to spawn the recently revived notion of punk jazz with their incendiary concoction of maverick avant garde jazz and rock sounds cooked up by spiky drummer Mark Holub.
Get The Blessing made a big impact last year with its debut album and returns this month with another helping of genre-melting jazz rock, this time titled Bugs In Amber.
Andy Sheppard, with his debut album as a leader on ECM, featuring his new international five-piece group, Movements in Colour, is a turning point in the career of the saxophonist who first came to notice back in the 1980s when jazz was briefly undergoing a mini-boom. His first record in some years the record also marks a subtle change in Sheppard’s style, incorporating Indo-jazz and Eurojazz nuances which allows him to explore areas of interest in his music that he has been developing since his...
The Branford Marsalis Quartet is one of the longest-running most influential jazz groups on the scene today and more important than just longevity, continues to evolve its music, refusing to settle into a comfortable orthodox. The notion of change and challenging audiences is very much to the fore on the new album Metamorphosen and it’s something Branford Marsalis talks to Stuart Nicholson about ahead of dates at the Bath festival and Ronnie Scott’s in May.
Bill Bruford surprised us all earlier in the year by announcing his intention to retire from active performance.
It’s a mature Ravi Coltrane that appears impressively on new album Blending Times. Recorded not long after the death of his mother Alice Coltrane, Ravi talks to Stuart Nicholson about his own approach often only seen within the prism of his father’s legacy. It’s a path that began with early on-the-road explorations with Elvin Jones and Steve Coleman coalescing into his early records for RCA and more recent work with Saxophone Summit.
Gilad Atzmon bids a none-too-fond farewell to George Bush with his new album, In Loving Memory of America, which, slightly surprisingly, takes Charlie Parker’s Bird With Strings project as its main focus. Yet typically Atzmon, surely the most politically and satirically inclined jazz musician anywhere on the planet, finds a new way forward for the bebop warhorses he uses as raw material. Andy Robson bunkers down with Gilad for a no-holds-barred discussion.
Gareth Williams has always been recognised on the British jazz scene as an improviser with a subtle but effective touch, whether he finds himself accompanying singers like Claire Martin or playing acid jazz with Us3. His new record, however, signals a change of course, moving him in the direction of the beefed-up power trio, which you might think suits his retro-inclined 70s fashion sense and mod leanings. But as Selwyn Harris finds out, there’s more to Williams than meets the eye – a musician...
Musical genes don’t run much deeper than Garrick’s. With a jazz pianist father and a mother who played classical piano and sang in the London Philharmonic choir, avoiding a musical upbringing and education would have been difficult. “We lived in a very claustrophobic house with a piano on each of its three floors,” recalls Garrick.