Liane Carroll celebrated, life, jazz and the unrestrained joy of music making on Friday night in the atmospheric, vaulting and somehow still cosy, converted church that is the Salisbury Arts Centre.
On a rainy evening in Dalston, 21 October – ‘Back To The Future Day’ – five young improvisers converge on the intimate upstairs room at The Vortex.
It’s a great recipe: take a string quartet line-up, dispense with one of the violins and replace it with an electric guitar, assemble folks who are at the top of their game for the four chairs, and kick off with some tunes from the brow of one of today’s leading jazz arrangers and composers.
For the first time in eleven years, leading US drummer Mark Guiliana returned to Ronnie Scott’s with his new Jazz Quartet, featuring the stellar talents of Jason Rigby, Fabian Almazan and Chris Morrissey.
The advance billing might have suggested a Joel Harrison solo set with some backing, but what we got instead on this Tuesday at Pizza Express was truly a band, one that gelled marvellously.
I’m writing this with one eye on an article about the world’s most stressed-out cities.
New York beat poet Barry Wallenstein joined Mike Hobart’s Urban Jazz Collective on Tuesday for an evening of verse and jazz at the Vortex.
With its emphasis on adventurous programming and bids to redress the gender imbalance permeating current mainstream jazz summits, this two-day fest was a tonic to those seeking a genuinely leftfield option.
Anyone bold or foolhardy enough to essay a career in jazz would be advised to start young, and commence building themselves an audience as soon as they can.
Bobby Wellins is unique; a near contemporary of Rollins, Shorter and Roy Haynes, he’s a representative of the generation who discovered modern jazz, introduced it to the UK and have nurtured it ever since.
