Can children as young as seven dig jazz? The Cheltenham Jazz Festival project Jazz Music For Schools proved that they definitely can. With a band named the Happy Vampers, and a sharply-focussed programme that engaged 1,400 children age seven to [...]
They really are Hurricane Bells. Back in 2018 Peter Shenai cast five bronze bells based on 3-D shapes derived from the formation assumed by Hurricane Katrina as it approached New Orleans. Byron Wallen has built their tones into a large-scale [...]
It’s rare to hear vocal groups at jazz festivals these days, so I was delighted to meet up with members of Flight Call when they appeared at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival. The trio of singers – Pete Horsfall, Lucy-Anne Daniels [...]
The Cheltenham Jazz Festival has always had a wide mix of styles, from big name Americans, to jazz influenced pop artists to soul singers. Alongside all those the Parabola Arts Centre (PAC) is a longstanding part of the festival that [...]
Just a few dates to go on their current European tour and James Brandon Lewis’s trio find themselves on stage in the somewhat chilly marquee that Cheltenham rather grandly call their Jazz Arena at 12.30 p.m. on a Sunday. That [...]
One of the highlights of the Parabola Arts Centre (PAC) programme is always the Saturday morning sold-out student exchange project, where students from overseas conservatoires (in this case from Hamburg and Siena), join with students from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire [...]
Nubya Garcia’s return to the UK at Cheltenham after a two-month American tour supporting her new album Osyssey saw her at the top of her game in a set that was both uncompromisingly visceral and a deeply personal appeal to [...]
London seven-piece Kokoroko seem to be on the verge of a massive breakthrough. Envisaged in 2019 as a fusion of jazz and afrobeat, their sound is and was emblematic of the Londonist Britjazz movement that seems to retain vitality as [...]
It’s early in the morning, this brain hasn’t had coffee and isn’t fully in gear yet, but I need to explain how some impeccably logical thinking came to fruition last night. Here goes: Theatre from the British Isles has a [...]
As a Cheltenham girl born and bred, I am totally committed to my home town and to the wonderful local community who continue to support me on my ongoing ‘journey’ as a jazz musician. It has been a long time [...]
