Sam Emony (the pseudonym for Neil Hughes) describes his novel The Old Familiar Places as “a love letter to the music that moves me the most”. Ahead of the launch at Ronnie Scott’s (details below) he talked about the background [...]
A second night of big band jazz brought more joy to fans of large ensembles in Birmingham. Following the concert by the Julian Siegel Jazz Orchestra on Tuesday, promoters B:Music combined with TDE Promotions to bring the vibrant Manchester-based Beats [...]
The Julian Siegel Jazz Orchestra has won critical acclaim for the new album “Tales From The Jacquard”, an extraordinary suite inspired by his family background in the Nottingham lace industry. On Tuesday the 19-strong orchestra opened a UK tour at [...]
Poet Peter Urpeth and saxophonist Evan Parker go back a long way, some 40 years, to when Urpeth joined Parker as pianist in an improvising trio. Their evening at the intimate Hundred Years Gallery celebrated Urpeth’s new book of poems, [...]
As a long-term unit, Wild Card’s heart is the trio of writer, arranger and guitarist Clément Régert, keyboard player Andrew Noble and drummer Sophie Alloway, a line-up that’s been together since 2012’s Everything Changes. On previous albums the group has [...]
Evoking Stephan Micus’ spacious and rich music, this entirely improvised album from Haftor Medbøe (guitar and effects) and Konrad Wiszniewski (saxophones), is a gem. Norwegian-born, Edinburgh-based Medbøe is omnipresent on the Scottish jazz scene. Professor of Music at Edinburgh Napier [...]
Sebastian Rochford is perhaps best known for having been the driving force behind the iconoclastic band Polar Bear; his new release on ECM, A Short Diary, the fifth on which he has appeared on ECM but the first as leader, [...]
