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Julian Maynard-Smith

The album cover for Unfolding is a black-and-white photo of a cup of coffee on shade-dappled planks. It’s a good visual analogue for these musical conversations between Louis Sclavis (Bb and bass clarinets) and Benjamin Moussay (piano): intimate, relaxed, tenebrous [...]

rec. 1985

A couple of months ago, Livia Records issued The Dublin Concert, a previously unreleased live recording of Louis Stewart with Jim Hall in 1982. Livia has now released another album of the great Irish guitarist in a guitar duo setting: [...]

rec. 2017

Norwegian trio Elephant9 creates a 21st-century schizoid child of the heaviest, riffiest elements of seventies prog and jazz-rock: something akin to early King Crimson and ELP crossed with Miles Davis’s Live Evil and Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Between Nothingness and Eternity. They [...]

We Will Meet Again, Sometime is the third album of original material that Irish pianist John Donegan has written for his sextet, after Shadows Linger (2022) and Light Streams (2023). Completing the sextet are brothers Michael Buckley (alto and soprano [...]

In 2022, Mexican American saxophonist Diego Rivera was commissioned by Chamber Music America to compose a jazz suite. He drew inspiration from la ofrenda (“the offering”), namely an altar in a Mexican family’s home to remember loved ones on Las [...]

Toulouse Lautrec, London, 27 September 2024

Kalpadruma (which means “tree of life” in Indian-origin religions) is an ensemble led by saxophonist/composer Asha Parkinson, a rising star who reached the semi-finals in the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year in 2016, 2018 and 2020, and who [...]

rec. 1982

Since 2023, Livia Records have meticulously restored and re-released three Louis Stewart albums: Some Other Blues, Out On His Own and Louis the First. Now they’ve released a rarity that will surely have jazz-guitar fans salivating: a cleaned-up and previously [...]

Claire Cope’s Ensemble C: ‘Every Journey’ album preview / Vortex Jazz Club. 11 September 2024

“So nice to see a busy room,” said pianist and composer Claire Cope after her eleven-piece ensemble had played their first piece, the eponymous “Every Journey (Has a New Beginning)” from her second album Every Journey, due for release in [...]

MoonDial is the third solo album Pat Metheny has recorded on baritone guitar, of which he’s had three built for him by the renowned Canadian luthier Linda Manzer. (She also built many of his other instruments, including his famous three-necked, [...]

“Japanic” is such a clever name for pianist Aki Takase’s latest group incarnation. A plausible synonym for “Japanese” (Takase being Japanese by birth but domiciled in Berlin since 1988), it’s also a portmanteau that includes “panic” – an apt word [...]

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