This is a brief, highly subjective (and not always completely serious) set of personal impressions of a great festival which happens right at the beginning of the year (*) A is for audience. I can’t help wanting to start this [...]
Any programme curated by Nod Knowles will delight and surprise in equal measure, and the Bath Jazz Weekend’s 2025 edition was no exception. Performances that drew explicitly on folk traditions ran like a thick seam through the programme, intertwined with [...]
Trumpeter James Davison and Trombonist Callum Au teamed up to recreate the iconic quintet set up of Clark Terry and Bob Brookmeyer in their cleverly named band Quintet-à-Tête at the 606 Club on the first Saturday night of 2025. Clark [...]
The track “Meet Me on the Midway” from “Little Big Top” (Motéma) feels like such a good place to be starting the year. Accordionist/composer Guy Klucevsek describes the track as “A tribute to the Slovenian-American polka tradition I grew up [...]
Oliver Weindling reports from the Rencontres AJC, where a new cohort of Jazz Migration bands was showcased, and a cross-border initiative “Jazz With” was launched. The Annual Meeting in Paris of AJC (Association Jazz Croisé) includes two nights of performances. [...]
Oliver Weindling reports from having spent three evenings in succession at Porgy and Bess club in Vienna. He writes: An eclectic three days at Porgy and Bess in Vienna, proving how it’s a venue really at the peak of the [...]
Latvian guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Reinis Jaunais is a restless wanderer who has taken his dextrous acoustic guitar-playing all over Europe, across Asia and to Australia and beyond. He’s a musical magpie, who takes in a myriad of influences from his [...]
This intriguing album came about as a result of drummer/percussionist Thomas Strönen having time at the end of a recording session to record a series of percussion and drum solos. It was at the time of the Covid pandemic so, on the advice [...]
When I reviewed the first of these shows in 2016, I wrote: “Whisper it quietly, but this could just possibly be the start of a new tradition.” Phew. Got one right. The whole event has a winning formula, it attracts [...]
The East London Community Band (ELCB) is a volunteer-run charity that gives musicians of any age, ability or instrument the chance to play music: from jazz, to early music, to classical. To celebrate their 50th anniversary they performed a multi-media [...]
