John Derek Bishop & Khaled Habeeb: Ekkofremtid If there’s a connecting theme to this month’s reviews then it’s surely the many different ways that memory interacts with the present and shapes the futu...

The sax star turned his back on fame to embrace free jazz. Caught on a tape machine hidden in an overcoat, newly revealed recordings show how he did it

Composer-guitarist Billy Marrows is unusual amongst his peers in as much as his musical identity owes at least as much to his award-winning compositions and arrangements as to his considerable powers ...

Part two of my round-up columns for Jazz Journal in 2026 - links in post.

Scrapbook of pictures from Ystad 2026

Arthur King: UMN (Fantastic Planet) The spoken introduction by renowned Canadian filmmaker Floria Sigismondi sets the scene nicely for the performance which follows. As many readers will already be aw...

The act of playing solo is widely considered to be the most exposed, and sometimes exposing, of formats for the performing musician. For the saxophonist it can often necessitate an entire re-think of ...

Despite this being my first visit to the Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival, it felt as though I was coming home. Located in the Skåne province on the southern tip of Sweden, it’s a beautiful part of the worl...

Steven Bernstein & Scotty Hard: ResoNation Trio & Ultra Resonance I remember seeing Sexmob at the Knitting Factory in the late 90s at the height of their fame, and it was clear that beneath the ribald...

Forecasters were wrong about an immediate recession but right that we would be worse off outside the EU

Liudas Mockūnas with Samuel Blaser & Marc Ducret: Twisted Summer Swiss trombonist Samuel Blaser‘s Spring Rain (Whirlwind, 2015), a homage to Jimmy Giuffre’s short-lived trio with Paul Bley and Steve S...

Schapiro’s stunning images of jazz greats in New York – from Dizzy Gillespie to Elvin Jones – make up a new book featuring a foreword by late saxophone icon Rollins

Gordon Grdina & Russ Lossing: Turnpike There are many strands to the music of Vancouver-based guitarist and oud player Gordon Grdina, and while some of his projects lean more towards jazz, indie-rock,...

After his death aged 95, we look back at a remarkable catalogue of work that stretches from vivacious mid-50s sets to his evocative performance after 9/11

Sonny Rollins dies the day before the Miles Davis centenary

Amongst the most interesting offshoots of the NuJazz of the ‘90s is surely the new Scandinavian ambient-jazz. Owing more to the future-primitive soundscapes of Jon Hassell than the pioneering jazz-roc...

Reminiscing about an evening at one of Germany's great live music venues.

Whoever coined the adage “time mellows the spirit” clearly hadn’t reckoned with defiant octogenarian Joachim Kühn. As the liner notes to this remarkable release make clear, Kühn views his advancing ag...

Photographs: Louise Grand Explaining the idea behind the music that dominated the evening’s programme, Cowley quipped that “…we take snippets of Bach’s music…and then …

Alm: Alm EP Alfred Vogel’s Boomslang Records is nothing if not eclectic, the Austrian label championing everything from free improvisation to contemporary jazz, grooves and singer-songwriters. This de...

Photo Credit: Simon Whitehead It’s often said that J.S. Bach’s influence on Western Music has been immeasurable, cutting across almost every era and tradition. Even those trying to…

Shawn Lovato: Biotic The chordless tenor trio is one of the most exciting and dangerous formats in jazz. For some it represents the ultimate technical challenge, while for others its harmonic and rhyt...

James Allsopp: Stars And Sand It’s around 20 years now since Allsopp burst onto the scene with the wonderfully squalling free-jazz and electronica mash-ups of his group Fraud, closely followed by his ...

Ahead of the centenary of Davis’s birth, musicians including Terence Blanchard and John Scofield analyse his brilliance: from his soft phrasing and spiritual feel to his raspy cussing and leather outf...

Julius Gawlik: It’s All In Your Head One of the unintended consequences of the rise of jazz education is that as technical proficiency has generally increased it has become harder for artists to stand...

From Tito Puente to Arturo O’Farrill, Latin Jazz remains one of the music’s most vibrant and popular sub-genres. Fusing the complexity of modern jazz with the danceable immediacy of Afro-Cuban rhythms...

French bassist Théo Girard will perhaps be best known to UK readers for his collaborations with Seb Rochford, the two having appeared together on Girard’s ‘30Years From’ (2017), ‘Bulle’ (2019) and ‘Pe...

Anders Lønne Grønseth’s Multiverse: Tidkapsel #1 With each successive release Norwegian saxophonist and composer Anders Lønne Grønseth discovers new vehicles for his theories of bi-tonality. While 202...

Agnar Aspaas Quintet: November Songs (Losen Records LOS316-2) Those outside of Norway may be unfamiliar with bassist Agnar Aspaas (b.1955), and if they’ve heard of him at all it might be in the contex...

While some albums are recorded in a single take, or more usually over two or three intense days in the studio, the eight meticulously detailed pieces of ‘Barene’ took rather longer to complete. The al...

Jack DeJohnette, of the most daring and singular jazz drummers of the last 60 years, died on Sunday.

Drummer played on Bitches Brew and other landmark recordings, as well as making numerous albums as a bandleader

Robin Holcomb & Peggy Lee: Reno (Songlines SGL1637-2) I remember buying a copy of singer-pianist Robin Holcomb’s 1989 debut Larks, They Crazy shortly after its release. I was drawn to it as much by Ma...

UK readers will probably remember alto saxophonist and educator John O’Gallagher from his years - from 2018 until 2021 - as Senior Lecturer at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. During that period he...

Tickets for big tours have vastly outstripped inflation, while smaller artists and venues struggle. The magic is in danger of being snuffed out entirely, says Guardian columnist John Harris

If Swedish bassist and producer Petter Eldh were known only for his work as an instrumentalist I suspect he’d still be widely regarded as a contemporary colossus. Over the last decade and some he has ...

If you were to listen to these three contrasting albums back-to-back you’d soon realise that the commonly voiced stereotypes about Scandinavian jazz are deeply flawed. Illustrating the great breadth o...

Andreas Haddeland Trio: Estuar (Tare Records TARE04CD) Much like the churning waters of the album’s title, Norwegian guitarist Andreas Haddeland’s music is a confluence of disparate currents. His expr...

Reflecting on AJ Dehany’s recent observations about the long-reach of Pierre Boulez as an influence on non-idiomatic improvised music (link to review), I think a similar case can be made for the pione...

Tom Service on a night of outrage at the Royal Albert Hall.

True to the founding mission of Robert Newman and Henry Wood in 1895, the annual Proms season continues to bring serious music to the masses at an affordable price. In recent years the series has incr...

Beiggja: Morning (Hubro CD2671) Although not it’s intended as a site-specific work, I can’t help thinking that the music on this debut album by Dutch-Norwegian quartet Beiggja has been profoundly insp...

It’s often said that Siggi Loch - and his successor Andreas Brandis - regard the roster of their ACT Music label as an extended family, and the number of artists recording primarily or exclusively for...

Anders Filipsen Trio (AFT): Aldebar Nights Of Mangos (ILK368CD) All four of the albums in this month’s round-up speak of the way in which the powerful forces of personality, intellect and innovation a...

Discovering the joys of trio improvisation during pre-show sound-checks while touring with Sinikka Langeland, Trygve Seim (tenor & soprano saxophones), Anders Jormin (bass) and Markku Ounaskari (drums...

I first encountered French-Syrian flautist and composer Naïssam Jalal via her 2023 album Healing Rituals, a heady mélange of Arabic and chamber jazz influences with a smattering of syncopated hip-hop ...

Kjetil Husebø: Piano Transformed – Interspace (Optical Substance Productions OSP010) My reviews of Kjetil Husebø’s recent ambient jazz projects have spoken of the Norwegian pianist-composer’s solid gr...

Returning to the banks of the Tyne to Gateshead’s Glasshouse International Music Centre for a second time in as many weeks, as I saw the posters for the venue’s 20th Anniversary I could…