Austria’s place in the jazz firmament has been well established by its native musicians (notables such as Joe Zawinul, the Muthspiel brothers and the celebrated Vienna Art Orchestra) but also by the quality of its promoters – think of Saalfelden Festival, Vienna’s Porgy and Bess Club and Salzburg’s Jazz In The City.
Last time Jazzwise took an evening to see Bex Burch’s out-of-the-ordinary quintet was on a lively Saturday night at Dalston’s renowned live music oriented dance club Passing Clouds.
There is a significant coterie of jazz fans that come away disappointed if a show labelled as jazz doesn’t swing.
Three nights in to his five-night stay at Pizza Express, on his first UK visit for years, trumpeter Leroy Jones looked out on his house-full audience, and reflected that numbers thus far would probably ensure him a return booking and smiled.
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.
