Features

Lizz Wright - Garden Of Earthly Delights

When Lizz Wright debuted with Salt five years ago it was clear even then that the jazz world had found a new unique talent even if the album was ostensibly a strongly gospel-rooted affair. By the time of her second album Dreaming Wide Awake, when she was on the cover of Jazzwise for the first time, awash with arresting bottleneck backgrounds and intuitive acoustic and jazz-into-folk settings it was clear that new musical directions were being pursued and that she was becoming a significant jazz...

Matthew Bourne - Fun Boy Free

Pianist Matthew Bourne last year released a remarkable live album recorded in the Norwegian city of Molde. It provided a fascinating glimpse into the world view of the Leeds improv and jazz scene kingpin. The Molde album was the latest milestone in a career trajectory that saw an early peak five years ago with the prodigious flow of his debut record The Electric Dr M for the Sound label. It’s year zero, however, for Bourne as he now unveils the debut of his trio Bourne/Davis/Kane.

Ian Shaw - Safe And Sound

Ian Shaw, the leading male jazz singer of his generation in the UK, follows up his expertly pitched Joni Mitchell songbook album from 2006 with a brand new album released this month full of original material. The themes of the album, he tells Andy Robson, involve meditations on Shaw’s notions of his own sense of place, the process of growing older and above all, love

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...

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