Live Review: North Ark at The Verdict
New Generation Jazz: North Ark The Verdict, Brighton Friday 20th December, 2019 Pianist Joe Hill released North Ark’s eponymous debut album back in 2018 and since then they’ve appeared at last year’s Love Supreme Festival. Usually the band features alto saxophonist Tom Smith and trumpeter James Davison, but for this New Generation Jazz performance they […]
Live Review: Riley Stone-Lonergan Quartet at The Verdict
Riley Stone-Lonergan Quartet The Verdict, Brighton Sunday 29th December, 2019 Seldom-seen tenor player Stone-Lonergan has earned himself an awesome reputation among his fellow London musicians, and those jazz fans who’ve caught him on the rare occasions that he’s emerged to lead a band before the general public. November’s EFG Jazz Festival saw him break cover […]
Album Review: Binking Golding – Abstractions of Reality Past and Incredible Feathers
Binker Golding Abstractions of Reality Past and Incredible Feathers (Gearbox GB1555) Binker Golding constantly confounds expectations. His duo act with Moses Boyd opened the doors to TV appearances and international touring with its raw yet accessible streetwise distillation of beats and melody: his role as sideman with Mr Jukes and Zara McFarlane might lead some […]
Jazz News (Jan. 2020)
Brian Homer Photo Exhibition Freelance jazz photographer Brian Homer has a new exhibition at Centrala in Birmingham from 15th January to 1st February. The exhibition features photographs from a collaborative pilot research project called Everyday Jazz Life, a photographic project on contemporary jazz musicians lives in Birmingham and coincides with the Documenting Jazz Conference at […]
Big Band Scene (Jan. 2020)
Happy New Year. In contrast to the general gloom about the state of the nation, there is good news on the big band scene. 2020 shows an increase of four Sussex based big bands compared with 2019. Who are included in my annual January list of active gigging big bands based in the county. As […]
Column: Simon Spillett – Sixty Not Out
So…where to begin? I was honoured to be among the sixty saxophonists chosen to close the Ronnie Scott’s 60th Anniversary concert at the Royal Albert Hall, a logistical feat that required – as Ronnie himself might have put it – ‘the cunning of a sewer rat and the timing of a Swiss watch.’ The bulk […]
Nye Banfield Interview
A recent graduate of the jazz course at Trinity Laban Conservatoire, saxophonist Nye Banfield spoke to Charlie Anderson ahead of his appearance for New Generation Jazz at The Verdict in January. How did you first get into music? I grew up in Leicestershire but I went to school in Grantham, in Lincolnshire, a tiny […]
Jazz Essentials: Wynton Marsalis – Wynton Marsalis
We live our lives through recommendations, from the ten best Sunday roasts in Brighton’s pubs to those irritating suggestions from Amazon to buy more stuff we don’t really need. But sometimes these prompts serve a purpose, to encourage us, in this case, to hear some of the best jazz ever recorded but which we might […]
Peter Batten Interview (Part 2)
This interview is a continuation of Part 1 of the interview available here. What happened after you left university? I worked in London for a time for the LCC and played in various odd little bands around London, then I got married, moved to Peterborough and played in a jazz band there. After that […]
Pete Recommends: Dave Frishberg – Lookin’ Good
Dave Frishberg Lookin’ Good Although I often doubt whether anyone reads this column, I know that my friend Adrian does. He sometimes even buys my recommendation. Recently in a New York store he found an original vinyl issue of my Maxine Sullivan recommendation. So I have chosen this month to dedicate my choice to him. […]