Features

The Neil Cowley Trio - Loud And Proud

The Neil Cowley Trio shook up jazz fans two years ago with debut album Displaced, which was a bolt from the blue at the time. Neil Cowley, Richard Sadler and Evan Jenkins grabbed the jazz trio format by the scruff of its neck while not forgetting the elements that made it great in the first place. Cowley, best known for his work with key jazz funk and chill out bands, had come up with a post-EST concept that was distinctly fresh and rooted in his jazz influences, including the music of Keith...

Chick Corea and Gary Burton - The Sound of Silence

More than 35 years have passed since Chick Corea and Gary Burton came together to record the classic album Crystal Silence. The two have now recorded once again, this time for Concord to produce a two-CD set with a big difference as the first disc of The New Crystal Silence finds Corea and Burton performing with a symphony orchestra using new arrangements by saxophonist Tim Garland.

Outhouse - Free your mind

Outhouse makes its eponymous debut next month with the Anglo-French quartet joined by singer Jeanne Added and tama drummer Kaw Secka. The group grew out of Loop collective sessions in Kentish Town influenced partly by its empathy with the Parisian Hask collective scene and the burgeoning confidence of the new wave of post-Polar Bear London bands pouring out of the London music colleges.

Courtney Pine - Out Of Many, One People

Courtney Pine, the key jazz musician of his generation in the UK has formed a new version of the seminal 1980s big band, the Jazz Warriors. Instead of merely revisiting the past, the saxophonist has created the JazzWarriors Afropeans with the intention of reflecting through his music and ideas the 200 years since the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the former British Empire. He achieved this aim by recording a live album last October recorded at the Barbican which will be...

Horace Silver - Finger Poppin'

Pianist Horace Silver is one of the most influential pianists in jazz and the very personification and creator of what has been called soul jazz, composing what are now standards such as ‘Sister Sadie’ and ‘Señor Blues’ and piloting a distinctive direction the Blue Note records sound would take. Initially making an impact with Art Blakey, who “borrowed” the name of Silver’s group to form The Jazz Messengers, Silver went on produce a series of classic albums for Blue Note in the 1960s,...

Barak Schmool - Fanning The Flame

Barak Schmool is the relatively unsung organiser and ideas man behind the F-IRE Collective, the coalition of like-minded groups and musicians who have organised themselves into a musical force to reckon with. The saxophonist and percussionist continued his work very recently with a performance at the F-IRE festival in London. As two of his bands are set to release new albums, one brand new and the other a reissue, Barak explains his thinking to Daniel Spicer.

Tomorrow is the question: who to look out for in 2008

As Jazzwise once again dons its Mystic Meg outfit and peers into the brave new dawn of 2008 the eyes of the world are tightly focused on 4 November when the good people of the United States go to the polls in the 55th US Presidential Election to hopefully bring about the kind of regime change the planet is begging for – hanging chads permitting that is. But hey, that’s almost a year away so dear reader we divert your attention away from the oncoming media frenzy and invite the movers and shakers...

Jazzwise Magazine Albums Of The Year 2007

Jazzwise, the UK’s biggest selling jazz magazine, is delighted to announce that Empirical by Empirical has been voted the Album of the Year for 2007 by Jazzwise writers.  Who could have foretold that when Empirical bagged their first ever press as a freshly minted band in the Jazzwise Taking Off section exactly 12 months ago their eponymously-titled debut album, produced by Courtney Pine and released in July on the Destin-e label, would amass the most votes from Jazzwise writers barely a year...

Guy Barker - Dark End of the Street

Trumpeter Guy Barker has just released his most ambitious album to date, a 2-CD set, inspired by Mozart. Titled The Amadeus Project it grew out of two separate commissions, one instrumental, the other with an actor narrating. Mozart’s most mysterious opera, die Zauberflöte, has in the process become ‘dZf’, with a Chandler-esque noir and the cool of the night about it. Stuart Nicholson tells the story behind the album and as the trumpeter prepares to turn 50 later in December, looks back on over...

Steve Reid - Surreal Rhythm And Blues

The gulf between the world of Martha Reeves and the Vandellas and the house band of James Brown at the Apollo to working recently with local musicians in Senegal is as big historically as it is musically yet musical chameleon Steve Reid sits as happily these days at his kit whether it’s a loft jazz, R&B, pop or world music situation as he did back in the day. With the loose feel of Reid’s latest record Daxaar echoing in his ears Kevin Le Gendre talks to Reid about the journey he has made through...

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