A thunder of Afro-Jazz drums roared across the stage during the climactic highlight of a remarkable all-star show, dedicated to the memory of the late Jack Bruce.
Andrew Bain is a truly transatlantic talent, dividing his time between Manhattan and Birmingham UK, with an impressive list of musical and educational attainments behind him.
In 1968, the inaugural year of the Umea Jazz Festival in Sweden, an all-conquering cohort of six-string heroes were wiring Fenders and Gibsons into the frontal cortex of popular culture, the ongoing brainwaves of which can be seen in the truly astounding Guitar Museum that is around the corner from the multi-purpose Folkets Huus, whose several auditoriums host some 45 gigs in four days.
On Monday night, the Jazz Nursery journeyed to The Vortex from its new home at the i'klectik arts lab in Waterloo, to showcase a special nonet packed with emerging talent.
Black History Month rightfully seeks to expand views of Africa and its Diaspora, but there are usually glaring blind spots.
Jazz is cool again, report the latest editorials.
Founded five years ago, Limerick JF always comes up with interesting and/or unexpected players or presentations.
Gareth Lockrane is in town tonight with a bag full of new tunes and a cohort of old friends to play them with.
If there was an air of self-congratulation about this year’s Punkt festival then it was entirely justified: now in its 12th year, this ‘small, but perfectly formed’ niche festival in the Norwegian city of Kristiansand looms impressively large on the international scene.
Mark Nightingale, easily our premier jazz trombonist (though Alistair White is snapping at his heels, in my opinion), had assembled an all-star quintet for this occasion, with that stalwart of British jazz Alan Barnes alongside on alto and baritone, the rarely seen Jim Watson (depping for the absent Graham Harvey) on piano, bassist Simon Woolf and drummer Matt Skelton.
