Django Bates: Like Life: The Jazzpar Prize

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Django Bates (p, ky)
the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra
Martin France (d)
Michael Mondesir (b)
Iain Ballamy (ts)

Label:

Storyville

November/2011

RecordDate:

1997

A welcome release that superbly complements last year’s “lost” live Loose Tubes album. It’s also an album that has a significance beyond its splendid content. It features the now infamous take on ‘New York, New York’ which contributed to Bates’ early departure from Polygram. Here though it’s a celebratory calling card: with the winning of the Jazzpar Prize Bates won a recognition long denied him and it set him on the path to his residency at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory where his writing continues to mature while he nurtures a generation of European players. The content here though looks back over the songs of the previous decade – a joyous ‘Armchair March’, a deliriously self-enfolding ‘The Loneliness Of Being Right’ and a riotously swinging title track. Old pals like Ballamy join the party, but it’s the razor sharp discipline of the DRJO, doing their version of Delightful Precipice, that impresses and gave Bates the confidence to realise that, at last, he’d discovered a home from home (as long as they learned how to make a decent cup of tea).

Follow us

Jazzwise Print

  • Latest print issues

From £5.83 / month

Subscribe

Jazzwise Digital Club

  • Latest digital issues
  • Digital archive since 1997
  • Download tracks from bonus compilation albums during the year
  • Reviews Database access

From £7.42 / month

Subscribe

Subscribe from only £5.83

Never miss an issue of the UK's biggest selling jazz magazine.

Subscribe

View the Current
Issue

Take a peek inside the latest issue of Jazzwise magazine.

Find out more