Top UK trombonist Dennis Rollins (pictured) completes a busy year – which has seen him play a starring role in iconic alto sax man Maceo Parker’s touring band –with an extensive UK tour to promote his fiery latest album The 11th Gate.
Blue Note records has confirmed the release date of the latest album, the fourth for the label, by pianist Robert Glasper.
Jazz pianist Gordon Beck, who will be remembered for his album Experiments With Pops and as a sophisticated Bill Evans stylist with a melancholic slightly elegiac edge, passed away yesterday, 6 November.
The irrepressible James Taylor Quartet, led by their eponymous Hammond B3 bashing maestro (pictured), are set to pay a fulsome big band tribute to one of their prime inspirations, Jimmy ‘The Cat’ Smith at Chelsea venue Under The Bridge on 25 November.
While drummer Matt Slocum is a complete unknown to UK jazz audiences and the young US player was even visiting London for the very first time, performing at the Pizza Express Jazz Club on Tuesday evening, he was in very experienced and high flying company.
Dreamer In Concert, the follow up to Raconte Moi for Blue Note, was launched by Stacey Kent and her band on Monday night at Ronnie Scott’s club.
The headlines of the 34th Cork Jazz Festival seem to be about saxophones, especially American altos.
Courtney Pine and his Europa band, jazz funk alto great Pee Wee Ellis and Pork Chop, the extraordinary Cuban montuno specialist Roberto Fonseca, and elegant UK bop legend Peter King with his quartet are just some of the eyecatching main headliners of the Gateshead Jazz Festival which has just announced its line-up, the first major UK jazz festival of 2012.
The spirit of Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, and the blues, were at the forefront of the Marc Ribot Trio gig in the Bishopsgate Institute during the latest of the Vortex City Sessions on Friday night.
Popular and highly acclaimed pianist Zoe Rahman (pictured), who shot to wider public awareness when her luminous album Melting Pot was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize, is set to return early next year with her fifth album Kindred Spirits and an extensive UK tour.
