The Bad Plus have been going in one form or another for nearly twenty-five years. When founder member Ethan Iverson was in the group, they arguably reinvented the form of the piano trio with an iconoclastic approach to standards and [...]
The star of this show wasn’t actually on stage: Max Roach (1924-2007), one of the great drummers who reinvented jazz drumming for the bebop era (and hence all that followed) and, as Kevin LeGendre pointed out in his introduction to [...]
It was entirely fitting that Sunday’s show by Village of the Sun in the subterranean depths of Lafayette near Kings Cross was standing only: crossing genres, the audience was moved to dance from the start. The three piece of Binker [...]
Norman&Corrie are Norman Wilmore and Corrie Dick. They’ve been working together for a while; for this duo project, they’ve trawled the archives of Wilmore’s native Shetland for a wealth of folk tunes which they’ve arranged, deconstructed and made entirely their [...]
Beneath a large dome in a square room – the former home of the Limelight Club in Shaftesbury Avenue – this was a highly intimate show. Performed in the round in the centre of the audience, the quartet facing each [...]
Ali Watson is a Glasgow-based bass player, rooted in that city’s vibrant jazz scene, perhaps most familiar for his work with Matt Carmichael. Terrarium, his debut album, proves him to be a talented composer, too. Joined by Carmichael, together with [...]
Although not internationally known just yet, Playtime has become an institution in Edinburgh and, to a degree, in Scotland generally. Working under the strapline of Adventures in New Music, it began in April 2014 as a weekly live session where four of Scotland’s [...]
Luminescence is an ongoing collaboration between saxophonist Tommy Smith and the Edinburgh-based visual artist Maria Rud. As Smith improvises, Rud paints, the ever-changing images projected for the audience to see. In his accompanying notes, Smith says two other factors are [...]
Tales of the Skald is the first album from drummer Stephen Henderson‘s quintet, Modern Vikings, which has existed with unchanged personnel since 2018. The group includes his band mates Fergus McCreadie and David Bowden from the award-winning Fergus McCreadie Trio [...]
Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival: Playtime with Byron Wallen, Soweto Kinch Trio, Matthew Kilner Quartet, Laura Jurd Quintet, Norman Willmore Sextet, Tim Garland’s Lighthouse Trio It’s the middle of July, and the Edinburgh Jazz and Blues Festival comes around again: [...]
