With a Gareth Lockrane gig you always get more than you bargained for: the latest outing of his Big Band at Ronnie’s on Sunday night amounted to two-and-a-half hours of tasty originals, each given an epic 18-piece treatment in front of a packed house.
This is the third in a trio of vocal-led Sunday lunchtime gigs I’ve attended at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in the last few weeks, and it was easily the most ambitious of the three.
Photo: © Ragnar Berthling Hear Here, Café Oto, London If there is a dress code at all in the avant-garde then it is presumably not a black T-shirt, jeans, swirl around the bicep tattoo and nose ring.
Sub-titled ‘Count Basie: Kansas City to New York’ this was another in the occasional series of RAM big band concerts devoted to the swing-era repertoire, curated and directed by jazz authority Keith Nichols, who teaches jazz history there.
A rare moment at a jazz gig: a request not just for a song, but a chart hit.
The Verdict, Brighton The start is explosive.
The Verdict, Brighton 28 February 2015 Any improvised jazz gig sends the performers out on a tightrope walk in front of the audience - Tony Kofi introduces tonight’s show as “no parachute, no safety net”.
Compressed into contorted shape, the body’s bent frame is sprung under a mass of notes pouring down into the saxophone.
Having been totally bowled over by Louise Balkwill’s incredible vocals and engaging stage presence on a jazz summer course a few years back, I was keen to see how she and her Trinity College compatriots sounded as a fully-fledged jazz band at a Sunday lunchtime gig at Pizza Express Jazz Club on Dean Street.
We might have been in Camden, but in a concert of rare intimacy and tenderness, singers Anita Wardell (above left) and Nicky Schrire (above right), and pianist Robin Aspland conjured the clear, bright air of their Southern Hemisphere roots.
