Josef Herman: Warsaw, Brussels, Glasgow, London, 1938-1944
Josef Herman's early, cathartic work should not be missed
Josef Herman: Warsaw, Brussels, Glasgow, London, 1938-1944
Josef Herman's early, cathartic work should not be missed
Red Army Faction Blues
Red Army Faction Blues persuasively blends fact and fiction in its account of Germany's turbulent times from the '60s to the '80s, writes Paul Simon
Chris Searle
Bailey Swedens the deal
Tuesday 07 February 2012
Among the expatriate US jazz musicians who made a permanent home in Europe - along with fellow trumpeter Art Farmer, mighty tenorists Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon and Johnny Griffin and the arch-pianist Bud Powell - Cleveland-born Benny Bailey was less renowned but still among the finest.
Sheer sonic adventure
Tuesday 31 January 2012
It's too simplistic to say that jazz came from the United States.
Trio-X mark the spot
Tuesday 24 January 2012
The free improvising threesome Trio-X are regular visitors to The Spirit Room, the unique recording studio of CIMP records at Rossie, a rural venue in New York State which records music with its full integrity and honesty - gimmickless, pure and authentic, "capturing the full dynamic range one would experience at a live concert."
Alpha Boy
Monday 16 January 2012
From Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and all the jewelled islands in between they came after a world war. Migrants, nurses, teachers, soon to become railwaymen, bus drivers, factory wokers all Caribbean peoples whose families and forebears had so much taken from them during the 400 years of slavery, colonialism and imperial bondages.
Good Ghosh
Thursday 12 January 2012
The first two albums of the young clarinettist Arun Ghosh - seething as they do with the urban joys and tensions of Mancunian life - also inform of deeper provenances.
Lionel Loueke
Monday 09 January 2012
Lionel Loueke was born in 1973 in the west African state of Benin.
Monarch of the misery stick
Sunday 18 December 2011
The blues dripped from his reed with every note that he blew, and, along with his horn partner Louis Armstrong in Hot Five and Hot Seven Chicago recording sessions, he was one of the first sustained soloists in jazz.
Aki Takase Piano Quintet
Tuesday 13 December 2011
The Japanese pianist Aki Takase, born in Osaka three years after the human catastrophes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was raised in Tokyo and began learning the piano at the age of three as if it were another attached natural organ.
The archetypal hard-bopper
Monday 05 December 2011
What was it like, sitting in 1975 at the front table of Ronnie Scott's but five yards away from a rampaging Art Blakey at his full and thunderous drum fury?