Category: Jazz
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Millicent B James: Moyo, Vol.1 EP
Releases by local bands always make us nervous; if they’re no good, what do we say? Sadly for everyone else, this new EP from Biddolphian Millicent sets a new benchmark: it’s wonderful. She’s is not a novice: a composer, cellist and vocalist, she regularly sings with the RBC Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra and RBC Jazz…
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Emil Ingmar: Karlavagnen
This is easy-on-the ear jazz with a travelling theme. The opening song Karolinabacken (which according to Google translate is Caroline Hill) has a rhythm suggesting a train ride or maybe passing lampposts (or trees, given that he’s Swedish) flashing by. He’s a pianist and the piano melody over the top is bright and breezy: a…
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The Dave Ingham Group: A Sea Of Green
Quite often the first play for an album is on a weekend, doing the chores: “Good for doing the ironing to” never seems much of a recommendation and has never figured until now. But this new jazz album from the Dave Ingham Group is such a beast; really good for doing the ironing to, or…
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Nils Landgren and Jan Lundgren: Kristallen
You wait, as they say, ages for an album of modern chamber music and then two come together, this and the Salt House album (folk, if you can’t be bothered clicking). Landgren (trombone and vocals) and Lundgren (piano) play similarly organic music to Salt House, and while it is jazz, it’s got an intimacy that…
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Marius Neset: Viaduct
Nominally jazz but Norwegian saxophonist Neset proves he is a composer, period, as he and the London Sinfonietta baffle anyone who tries to pigeon-hole music. The piece opens with bustling orchestral strings and percussion before a jazz sound emerges with urgently plucked double bass (?) and some easy listening sax before it all goes a…
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Jon Hemmersam and Asal Malekzadeh: In the Moment – Improvisations, Compositions
Jam bands in other genres of music are quite common (Grateful Dead, Phish, lots of jazz) but these are based around some kind of pre-agreed structure or extension to a song, or are improvised around the same tune every gig. Hemmersam and Malekzadeh had never met prior to the recording of this album, and the…
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Spider’s Egg: SWR NewJazz
Sometimes we think jazz is the only music you need, ranging as it does from the electronic ambient to full-on prog: it’s as daft calling it all jazz as it is calling “world” anything that’s not western pop. Normally the different sounds are on different albums by different people: on this mind-blowing CD, out now…
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Echoes Of Swing: Winter Days at Schloss Elmau
Echoes of Swing are in top form for this festive album, the quartet of Bernd Lhotzky (piano), Colin T Dawson (trumpet), Chris Hopkins (alto saxophone) and Oliver Mewes (drums) joined for this by US jazz singer Rebecca Kilgore (“one of the best interpreters of the Great American Songbook” says Wikipedia). The premise of the album…
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Chris Gall and Mulo Francel: Mythos
Saxophonist Mulo Francel is well known (though not to us; we won’t pretend) for his work with platinum-selling jazz/world quartet Quadro Nuevo; Gall is a fifth member for live gigs. Kulturnews magazine credits Francel with the “most sensuous saxophone sound in Europe”. The idea of this album apparently began at the end of a hard…
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4WD: Live
4WD is a European jazz supergroup — Nils Landgren, Michael Wollny, Wolfgang Haffner and Lars Danielsson. All four members are bandleaders in their own right, hence the band name. The studio version came out earlier this year; they’ve toured it, got better and recorded it. Note it’s the band that’s live: this is not alive…
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