Strap yourself in and let go of any fixed ideas of how music should sound. Free-jazz ensemble, A Bigger MOUTH have turned it up a notch for their second album, ‘Band Stand’. The single, ‘Structural Nonsense’ is out now and [...]
Kansas City-born jazz vocalist Deborah Brown lights up the room. She connects with her fellow musicians, and her audience, like no one else. Her vocal range remains incredible…. Mātyās Gayer and Deborah read each other beautifully, with a connection that [...]
Chamber recordings always reward my deepest attention, regardless of their style. Even more so when they involve musicians I admire. So it is with Flint, created by double bassist Joëlle Léandre and pianist Andrzej Karałow. These artists are from different [...]
This album is a re-issue on International Anthem Records of Ben LaMar Gay’s first album, which was a compilation from seven albums that LaMar Gay had recorded in seven years, but never actually issued. The eclectic music on this album [...]
Multi-award-winning trumpeter/bandleader Henry Spencer’s album The Defector received an abundance of critical praise around its release in September 2023. Featuring fellow stalwarts of the British jazz scene Ant Law (guitar), Matt Robinson (keyboards), Andrew Robb (bass) and Dave Ingamells (drums) – [...]
When I first met the singer and actor Jacqui Dankworth on a story for Jazz UK magazine in 2004, I have a suspicion I’d already mentally sketched the arc of a moving tale about a quietly eloquent performer searching for [...]
On the final day of registration for this year’s Jazzahead, Nicky Schrire reflects on the value of the event, and on the build-up over the past two years which has led to a more cohesive and substantial UK presence. One [...]
Anything by trumpeter Kenny Dorham instantly commands attention, and this Record Store Day release, on vinyl from Resonance Records, immediately moved to the top of my wish list. Resonance has a flair for finding and releasing rare sessions, unheard since [...]
The acorn was a discussion between Jonathan Nason and John Bowman, two residents of the village of Kings Bromley, a few miles north of Lichfield in Staffordshire. The sapling was a modest jazz club which first met a year ago [...]
Jazzdor, based in Strasbourg, fosters a spirit of collaboration and co-operation across national boundaries. In addition to its annual ‘home’ festival, it added Berlin more than 15 years ago. The Budapest festival is a relatively new addition, run in partnership [...]
American clarinettist Sam Sadigursky has released 11 acclaimed albums as a leader (New Amsterdam Records, Brooklyn Jazz Underground, and Adhyâropa Records), and appears on over 60 albums as a side musician, including on numerous Grammy nominees and winners, most recently [...]
The news that the Mack Avenue Music Group has acquired the rights to the legendary musician-run label Strata-East is followed by a special Record Shop Day vinyl release of the Pharoah Sanders‘ 1969 recording for the company, ‘Izipho Zam’, translated [...]
What a long way Sultan Stevenson has come. I cast my mind back to the first time I heard his trio in September 2021. They were in a potentially tricky slot, playing as support for Billy Cobham at the Jazz [...]
This set of rare and rather amazing soul classics has a lot going for it straight out of the gate. To start with, it comes courtesy of Ace Records, a magnificent label to be celebrated for its lovingly curated compilations, [...]
Amina Claudine Myers is one of those rare musicians where the music of the blues, gospel and jazz stretching out at its most adventurous is in the blood, and this came over no better than in her solo live performance [...]
Peggy Harvey (widow of Eddie Harvey) and Alec Dankworth (son of Sir John Dankworth) presented the winners of the Dankworth Prizes for Jazz Composition and the Eddie Harvey Jazz Arranger of the Year Award with their prizes at a ceremony [...]
Like the recent release of McCoy Tyner and Joe Henderson’s ‘Forces of Nature: Live at Slugs’ from 1966, Freddie Hubbard’s 1967 date at Sylvia Robinson’s Bronx club, the Blue Morocco, is a superior recording that wholly deserves its belated disinterment. [...]
Welsh-born, Amsterdam-based saxophonist and composer Alice Leggett is touring in the UK. Her debut album ‘Birdsong’ will be released in May on ZenneZ Records. Feature by Tara Minton. “Where is home?” It’s a question all too familiar to so many [...]
One of the great early artistic successes of the ECM catalogue and a foundational text for contemporary solo jazz piano, Chick Corea’s ‘Piano Improvisations Vol 1’ (and come to that, Vol 2, which hasn’t been added to this Luminessence vinyl [...]
The alchemy of top-flight groups seen at close quarters really is a miraculous thing. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing John Patitucci, and he talked about his memories of more than two decades with the Wayne Shorter quartet, and [...]
Today’s news from Hamburg is something special for British jazz: “British bandleader, pianist and composer Nikki Iles will be the new Principal Conductor of the NDR Bigband from the 2025/26 season. She succeeds Geir Lysne and will lead the renowned [...]
Joy seems in short supply at the moment. But one place you’re sure of finding it is on a Hiromi album, and the new goods news, a new one is on the way, out this Friday 4 April. Every time [...]
Congratulations to Jamie Cullum and producer Folded Wing. Jamie’s BBC Radio 2 show is 15 years old this week, and tonight (1 April 2025) there is a 15th anniversary edition. Jamie, who has been supportive of UKJN since we started, [...]
From playing keys with the all-conquering afrobeat inflected London party band that is Ezra Collective, to being a regular collaborator of Nubya Garcia and others, Joe Armon-Jones has become an inescapable presence in UK jazz and for good reason too. [...]
In 2019, singer, pianist, bandleader, presenter, producer, and educator Robin Phillips went on a road-trip on a Harley Davidson motorbike. His goal was “to retrace the path of jazz and blues in America, from Chicago to New Orleans”. It was [...]
London-born pianist of Barbadian and Vincentian descent Sultan Stevenson’s second album El Roi is styled as an artistic statement, musically conveying the estimable twenty-four-year-old’s thoughts and emotions around concepts of faith and identity. ‘El Roi’ means ‘God of Sight’, one [...]
The following is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and saxophonist Matthew Muñeses with harpist Riza Printup. Their new album, Pag-Ibig Ko Vol. 1, will be released 4 April via Irabbagast Records. Links to both artists’ websites can be [...]
Kinan Azmeh is a Syrian-born, Brooklyn-based clarinetist and composer who has gained international recognition for his distinctive voice across diverse musical genres. He brings his music to all corners of the world as a soloist and commissioned composer with leading [...]
Brunhild Ferrari, a significant – and until recently unsung – pioneer of Musique Concrète, has been gaining recognition in the past decade as a composer in her own right. Brunhild Meyer (b.1937) was drawn in to the realm of cutting [...]
Julius Hemphill, like Oliver Lake, Hamiett Bluett and many others, used to occupy that space in my head of the “lesser reported musician”. You had to dig a little into the history to find out where they were from, what [...]
My experience of Bergamo Jazz 2025 was elating and inspiring. It’s a wonderfully varied festival in great, characterful venues in a beautiful and unique city. The official stats are healthy: eleven out of twelve ticketed shows were sold out. The [...]
It was clear from the first album by Vega Trails, Tremors In The Static (Gondwana, 2022), that bassist Milo Fitzpatrick had struck gold. That album was a duo collaboration with all-rounder Jordan Smart. Now, for the second Vega Trails album [...]
