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 [...]
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 [...]
Irish bass player Ronan Guilfoyle has created for himself a unique position in jazz, although in something of a special niche. He has taken an instrument that’s only rarely seen in a jazz context and he’s made it his own, and [...]
Bedmakers is an occasional Anglo-French quartet of improvisers associated with the Toulouse based collective Freddy Morezon. They use the strapline “Tribute To An Imaginary Folk Band”. The album title, as well as meaning the mountain pass shown on the album [...]
Peter Slavid attended the concerts on Saturday 5 October at this year’s Newcastle Festival of Jazz and Improvised Music. He writes: The penultimate day of this, now well established festival saw a fine triple bill in the wonderful Literary and [...]
The band Söndörgő is often described as a World Music band, and indeed has won numerous awards under that category. For me its firmly in the tradition of modern European jazz. It combines deep ethnic Balkan roots with exciting improvisation. [...]
The final day of the Parabola programme was a good demonstration of the variety and vitality that this venue has always delivered. Very few people will have liked the whole programme, but nobody will have left without hearing something inspiring. [...]
One of the regular highlights of the Cheltenham programme is this project, where students from the Birmingham Conservatoire are joined by students from overseas. This year, those students came from Siena and Hamburg. Several of the participants in this project [...]
In complete contrast to Friday, Saturday in Cheltenham dawned in bright with warm sunshine, much to the delight of the audiences. The Saturday Parabola programme featured five very different events, starting with the regular student project which Cheltenham produced with [...]
