Leo Blanco returns to make Celtic connections
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Venezuelan pianist Leo Blanco returns to the UK at the end of January for concerts in Glasgow, London and Edinburgh.
He appears with his Blue Lamp Quartet at Glasgow’s Celtic Connections festival, plays a duo concert with last year’s Parliamentary Jazz Award winning Singer of the Year, Christine Tobin, and opens with a gig at Edinburgh’s Jazz Bar.
Blanco’s gig at Celtic Connections on Sunday 1 February reunites the Venezuelan with three of Scotland’s finest musicians – the Brazilian-born bassist Mario Caribe, alto saxophonist Paul Towndrow, of horn quartet Brass Jaw, and the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s drumming powerhouse, Alyn Cosker – who formed the Blue Lamp Quartet with Blanco to great acclaim and five-star reviews from The Scotsman and The Herald newspapers at Aberdeen Jazz Festival in 2007.
A musician who particularly enjoys working with singers (he has recorded and performed with Grammy-winning vocalist Luciana Souza as well as featuring alongside Dave Liebman, Donny McCaslin and Lionel Loueke), Blanco was so impressed with Christine Tobin’s vocal quality and her recent, award-winning album of Leonard Cohen songs, A Thousand Kisses Deep, that he invited her to join him at the Vortex on Wednesday 4 February in a programme of duets and solo piano pieces. He will also play with Caribe, Towndrow and Cosker at the Jazz Bar in Edinburgh on Friday 30 January.
– Rob Adams
For more info go to www.leoblanco.com/en/