Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan is the most substantial work of fiction to incorporate successfully jazz within its pages since Rafi Zabor’s The Bear Comes Home and is, in many ways, a more ambitious work than Zabor's ursine novel which won the 1998 PEN/Faulkner award for fiction in the US and deservedly so.
Reflecting its increasingly eclectic, often genre-hopping, programme Dalston’s Vortex hosts a hugely diverse five night mini-festival beginning tomorrow running until this Sunday, 9 October, curated by multi-talented drummer Seb Rochford.
On the first of a two-night run at Boisdale Canary Wharf, Chucho Valdés played at the Docklands venue for the first time on Friday, marking a new phase at this ambitious supper club with the visit by the great Afro-Cuban pianist and composer and his band, the Afro-Cuban Messengers.
Empirical, new Golubovich artists-in-residence at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music, last night in Deptford at the Laban Theatre played songs from their soon to be released third album Elements of Truth.
Counting down to the Marsden Jazz Festival in west Yorkshire, which gets underway in just over a week’s time, beginning tomorrow week Friday 7 October, and running through until the early evening of Sunday 9 October, opens with 52 Skidoo and a Revival Night Dance Class.
It was 20 years ago today that Miles Davis died, a momentous day that made news around the world, and one that saw the passing of one of the greatest figures in 20th century music, a man whose album Kind of Blue is without a shadow of a doubt the greatest jazz album ever made, and one whose career saw groundbreaking changes in style and idiom that influenced both his own musical development and that of his bands, jazz in all his forms, and music in general.
At a concert that marked 20 years of Armenian independence pianist Tigran Hamasyan, already a rising solo star on the international jazz circuit, performed on Saturday night with Indian master percussionist Trilok Gurtu at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.
In an announcement posted on their new website the Jazz Warriors have issued a mission statement that marks the return of the seminal 1980s big band, a musical collective instrumental in achieving a substantial resurgence in black UK jazz at the time, recording Out of Many, One People in 1987 following their foundation the year before and with the success of founder members, notably Courtney Pine, ushering in a successful period of UK jazz.
Guitarist Femi Temowo launched his second album Orin Meta at Under The Bridge, the venue that opened earlier this year at Stamford Bridge, under the Shed end of the East Stand, home to Chelsea football club.
Opening for the JTQ to a full house last night for the early show at Ronnie Scott’s, The Argentinian Connection quickly warmed up the audience with several skilfully delivered Latin numbers including Luis Borda’s ‘Lulu’.