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The Drawing Room of Brown’s Hotel in Albermarle Street in the evening is an intimate and wonderfully welcoming space. It’s best known as one of London’s best destinations for tea in the daytime. But in the evening its different: a [...]
This was the concert as conundrum; Kit Armstrong and Michael Wollny are two very different pianists. Alfred Brendel has praised Kit Armstrong’s “understanding of the great piano works that combines freshness and subtlety, emotion and intellect”, whereas Richard Williams has [...]
Catherine Russell’s duo album with pianist Sean Mason “My Ideal” (Dot Time) from earlier this year is a gem. I reviewed it for The Arts Desk (link below), and have gone on listening to it for pure pleasure, often wondering [...]
Jane Deppa of Grand Union has sent us sad news. “With deep sorrow we announce the death of Tony Haynes, Grand Union’s Composer and Creative Director for over 40 years. We feel honoured to have worked with him, and to [...]
Brown’s Hotel has been called the jewel in the crown of luxury hotels in London. …and on Tuesdays to Thursday evenings from 1 October to 19 December, its welcoming Drawing Room, which is normally known as one of the poshest [...]
Plexus: (Carlotta Armbruster and Jonas Heck) / Unionen (Petter Eldh, Gard Nilssen, Per Texas Johansson, Ståle Storløkken) This was my third and last concert during Cologne Jazz Week, so I’m not attempting to do justice to the breadth of the [...]
Second of three evenings at Cologne Jazz Week I started trying to remember good quotes about lightness, and there was a reason. W.B.Yeats wrote “tread softly because you tread on my dreams ” and there’s a Sonny Rollins liner note where [...]
Ambrose Akinmusire QuartetSamora Pinderhughes/ EOS Kammerorchester I am spending a couple of days in Cologne, and this is going to be the first of three concert reviews from Cologne Jazz Week. CJW is a major festival, with a lot going [...]
Seven concerts… seventeen (so far) listed musicians. Lists below… Derek Hook started the Ambleside Days Festival, “a Contemporary Music Festival in the heart of the English Lake District”, in 2017. This year’s edition builds to a large ensemble concert [...]
Could this year’s Sarah Vaughan Centenary be the gift which keeps on giving? Zara McFarlane has drawn inspiration from it to produce what is surely the best album of her career, “Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan” (links below), so last [...]
