Joy Ellis: “I feel this is the first time I’ve been able to express myself as a piano player” She’s known as an up-and-coming singer-songwriter but for her third album, Peaceful Place, Joy Ellis has opted to record a purely [...]
Nope, me neither. Which is one reason why John Altman, prolific composer, conductor, arranger and player, felt the urge to write this autobiography. While less than a household name, Altman has worked with everybody: on hit records with Rod Stewart, [...]
The much-admired young American alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins already fronts a fine quartet. But his second album poses the question: what would we sound like if God was in the band? OK, that’s a mildly flippant way of putting it [...]
There are lots of ways in which artists arrive at the final lap: you can just go on too long (Nina Simone, Sinatra); you can play simpler stuff (Miles Davis); you can play the same old stuff (the Stones). What [...]
As his second album Castelfidardo is released, Jonny Kerry talks about the joys and challenges of bringing the piano accordion to the jazz stage. Jonny Kerry could have taken the easy option and become a pianist: lots of well-mapped standards [...]
Well, when time travel is invented, this gig at the Penthouse, Seattle, in 1965 will be near the top of my bucket list. The soulful blues and meditative devotion of the studio album recorded the year before have evolved into [...]
“I like music that sounds as if it was sawed by a rusty saw,” says pianist Jason Moran. Ahead of his show with Archie Shepp on the opening night of the EFG London Jazz Festival, Moran looks forward to creating [...]
Irish drummer and bandleader Kevin Brady has reinvented his acoustic trio as an electric quartet for a new album on Ubuntu Music, Plan B – with Seamus Blake, Dave Redmond and Bill Carrothers. “There was no fruit thrown at us,” [...]
Kurt Elling has been busy turning himself into the male jazz vocalist of our times. In March he won his second Grammy for the elegant and original Secrets are the Best Stories. Now the master of bebop, skat and neo [...]
Birmingham-based composer Andrew Woodhead is about to perform the most ambitious piece you’ll hear this year. The album Pendulums – Music for Bellringers, Improvisers & Electronics was released in June, and the launch is on 16 October. For all the [...]
