FRI 9 – SUN 18NOVEMBER 2012CONCERt Hall pROgRaMME

FREE

Booking informationBarbican 020 7638 8891barbican.org.ukSouthbank Centre 0844 875 0073southbankcentre.co.uk

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BHI BHIMAN+ ANDREYA TRIANAtue 20 NovlONDON the Social

And in 2013

THE BE GooD TANYAs Sun 3 FeblONDON Barbicanand on tour

VIjAY IYERtue 5 Feb lONDON purcell Room

sAlIf KEITAWed 13 FeblONDON Royal Festival Hall

RICHARD THoMPsoNMon 25 FeblONDON 02 Shepherds Bush Empireand on tour

BRAD MEHlDAU & MARK GUIlIANA:MEHlIANAMon 11 MarlONDON Village Undergroundand on tour

swEET HoNEY IN THE RoCKSat 23 Mar lONDON Barbican

CHARlEs lloYDSun 28 apr lONDON Barbican

GATEsHEAD INTERNATIoNAl jAzz fEsTIVAlFri 5 – Sun 7 aprgatESHEaD the Sage gateshead

loVE sUPREMEFri 5 – Sun 7 JulglYNDE plaCE

THE 21stloNDoN jAzz fEsTIVAlFri 15 – Sun 24 Nov

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The London Jazz Festival – London’s biggest city-wide music festival – is back once again, ready to take over the capital for ten days and fill its every nook and cranny with live music. The Festival brings together established stars and emerging talent in a programme that’s made up of large-scale concerts, intimate club gigs, premieres, one-off collaborations, talks, masterclasses, family friendly shows, workshops and a wealth of free events.

The Festival has an unparalleled run of shows by major artists who have helped to define jazz. They claim a powerful position within the programme and include Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Bill Frisell, Brad Mehldau, Jan Garbarek, Egberto Gismonti, Paco De Lucia, Kurt Elling, Jack DeJohnette, John Surman, Sheila Jordan and Jim Hall. We also celebrate the new generation of contemporary jazz artists including Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper, Flavia Coelho, Tigran Hamasyan and Ambrose Akinmusire, along with home-grown talent including Beats & Pieces, Arun Ghosh and Shabaka Hutchings.

The Festival’s opening night is celebrated in style with Jazz Voice hosted by comedian/actor/writer/broadcaster John Sessions and features stunning vocals from Imelda May, Patti Austin, Juliet Roberts, Brendan Reilly, Claire Martin, Gwyneth Herbert, Junior Giscombe and Natalie Duncan. The gala is arranged and scored by Guy Barker and accompanied by the 42-piece London Jazz Festival Orchestra, and for the second year will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.

London’s vibrant club and arts centre circuit operates throughout the year, and remains an integral part of the Festival programme, hosting a massive range of younger artists including Mercury Prize-nominated Roller Trio, Soweto Kinch, Rory Simmons and Fyfe Dangerfield, plus established stars such as The Jazz Passengers, Patti Austin, Peter Brötzmann, Dee

Dee Bridgewater, Mike Westbrook, Jim Mullen and Stan Sulzmann.

Other special events to watch out for include A Weekend with Lucinda Williams; Marcus Roberts at Kings Place as part of a residency which sees performances from his consummate trio as well as him joining forces with players from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama Jazz Band; Festival on the Move with multi-vocal artist Hyperpotamus popping up all over London; and on Saturday 10 November at Queen Elizabeth Hall, our Feast of Jazz Film which over a full eight hours, from afternoon until evening, celebrates the lives of three jazz legends in Michel Petrucciani directed by Michael Radford, Sonny Rollins: Beyond The Notes directed by Dick Fontaine and Barbara Thompson: Playing Against Time directed by Mike Gibbs all for the price of one £10 ticket.

Learning & Participation is central to the Festival. Our Beyond Concerts programme offers an insight into jazz for all age groups, with opportunities to participate on a variety of levels. From Jazz for Toddlers with vibraphonist Orphy Robinson and Big Sing workshops for the family with Basement Jaxx star Brendan Reilly, through to in-depth master classes with the Jeremy Monteiro Trio and Greg Osby, there is something to engage the hardiest of jazz aficionados to the newest of audiences.

Returning in 2012 is our popular free pre-concert talk series Hear Me Talkin’ To Ya, and a chance to delve into the history of the music with Way In to the Way Out, or alternatively you can join our interactive Q&A sessions and workshops with leading musicians. To spot these, keep your eyes peeled for the talK and DO symbols.

If you’re looking for something for the whole family to explore, check out our series of family-friendly events – marked throughout with the FaMIlY symbol.

And remember that around a quarter of the programme is free, so if you’re around before, between, or after concerts, be sure to check out the Concert Hall foyers, where you’ll find heaps of live music to keep you occupied. Just look out for the

FREE symbol throughout the programme.

The popularity of the London Jazz Festival continues to grow and many shows do sell out in advance of the Festival, but its always worth trying your luck and heading to the Box Office returns queue where you might be able to bag yourself a last minute ticket. We’ve highlighted these particular concerts with a SOLD OUT – Queue for Returns logo.

Watch out for the logo, which highlights the Festival’s brand new programming strand Jazz in the New Europe.

BBC Radio 3, the Festival’s exclusive broadcaster will be providing plenty of radio and online broadcasts that you can tune in to. Over 40 hours of broadcasts on the radio and online means that the Festival reaches far beyond the Concert Hall. Look out for the Radio 3 red circle in the Festival brochure and for full details of all BBC Radio 3’s jazz programmes and Festival coverage please visit bbc.co.uk/radio3.

If you want to keep in touch with us throughout the year and be the first to hear what is happening for the 21st anniversary of the London Jazz Festival in 2013 please sign up for our newsletter at serious.org.uk/subscribe

You can also join us at facebook.com/londonjazzfestival and twitter.com/londonjazzfest for all the latest news…

We hope you enjoy the Festival!

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londonjazzfestival.org.uk

this programme covers all of the Concert Hall performances; for more information on the many other events in this year’s Festival, pick up an lJF brochure or visit londonjazzfestival.org.uk

KaI HOFFMaN FREE

QUaRtEt1pmSouthbank Centre/the Clore Ballroom

Kai Hoffman vocals / Gunther Kurmayr

piano / Geoff Gascoyne double bass / Sebastiaan

de Krom drums

they call the exuberantly entertaining american singer Kai Hoffman, ‘the Queen of Swing’ – but that doesn’t make her a memory-lane artist reprising the hits of the 1940s, rather a vivacious eccentric whose sources might be the propellerheads or ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. Hoffman has worked with saxophonist Ray gelato’s giants and with her own Kai’s Cats group, but this more intimate performance finds her with former Jamie Cullum partners geoff gascoyne (bass) and Sebastiaan de Krom (drums), alongside her regular pianist gunther Kurmayr. Ella Fitzgerald, and vocalese trio lambert, Hendricks and Ross were Hoffman’s first inspirations, but she studied classical French horn in New York, Berlin and at london’s Royal College of Music – subsequently playing with ensembles as diverse as the UK’s National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO) and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. With NYJO, Hoffman was given the chance to sing (and to dress up, a pursuit she embraces almost as enthusiastically as music), and in 2002 she met film and tV composer/arranger Simon Whiteside, an early Miles Davis fan with whom she founded the popular jitterbug-and-jive band Kai’s Cats. With comparably extrovert bandleader Ray gelato, Hoffman also devised the show ‘Hey Boy! Hey girl!’, launched at Ronnie Scott’s Club’s New Year celebrations in 2010.

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CECIlIa StalIN FREE

6pmBarbican Freestage

Cecilia Stalin vocals, band leader / Brendan

Reilly guest vocals / Liz Elensky backing vocals /

Daniel Bingham keyboards / Tom Mason electric

bass / Laurie Lowe drums

Swedish jazz and alt-pop vocalist Cecilia Stalin has worked with Stockholm’s electronica and acid-jazz duo Koop (Waltz for Koop, with Stalin’s vocals, appeared on the soundtrack of Woody allen’s Match Point) and with american hard-bop trumpeter Charles tolliver’s big band. living in the USa, Stalin collaborated with former John Coltrane bassist Reggie Workman, who suggested she write lyrics to classic Coltrane themes – the results, guided by a variety of producers from 50 Cent’s Keyon Harrold to New York’s grammy-nominated Herb Middleton, feature on her new album, Step Like A Giant. Stalin graduated from college in 2005 and moved to london two years later, working at the Electric proms with the Streets and on tour with the Cinematic Orchestra.

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VERNERI pOHJOla FREE

QUaRtEt6pmSouthbank Centre/the Front Room

Verneri Pohjola trumpet / Aki Rissanen piano

/ Antti Lötjönen bass / Joonas Riippa drums

Aurora, is the critically acclaimed debut album of young Finnish trumpeter Verneri pohjola, which received a five star review in The Guardian, among many other high praising reviews. pohjola began playing the trumpet in 1992 and has crafted himself a distinct trumpet sound. His tone is muted, yet cool with a clear, rough and occasionally metallic resonance.

RH

ROBERt glaSpER EXpERIMENt WITH SpECIAL GUEST DOOM+ pHaNtOM lIMB7.30pmSouthbank Centre/Royal Festival Hall

Robert Glasper Experiment / Robert

Glasper piano, keys / Casey Benjamin saxophone,

vocoder, synth / Derrick Hodge bass / Mark

Colenburg drums / Special Guest DOOM

Phantom Limb / Yolanda Quartey vocals

/ Dan Moore keys, vocals / Stew Jackson guitars,

vocals / Luke Cawthra guitar / Andy Lowe bass /

Matt Brown drums

Houston-born pianist Robert glasper is one of the few musicians who has enjoyed widespread success through combining jazz and hip-hop. as a student glasper gigged with Christian McBride, Russell Malone and Kenny garrett and was friends with hip-hop vocalist Bilal, giving him exposure to both genres. In 2003 glasper released his first album Mood on the Fresh Sound New talent label. two years later, he signed to prestigious jazz label Blue Note and his popularity began to soar. In 2009 he put out the aptly named record, Double Booked, which would prove to be a turning point in his career. the album included an acoustic jazz trio project for one set and glasper’s electric jazz-hip-hop collective for the other. the album was met with critical acclaim and in response to this positive reception, glasper released his fifth studio album, Black Radio earlier this year. the self-produced record is the first of glasper’s albums to completely feature his hip-hop outfit, the Robert glasper Experiment. Black Radio seamlessly blends a number of musical influences from jazz, hip-hop, R&B and rock, through collaborations with special

guests including, Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Bilal and Q-tip, who were all eager to work with the multi-faceted musician. glasper’s live shows are renowned for their equal share of guest appearances and this time DOOM takes to the stage at the Royal Festival Hall.

phantom limb were formed in 2004 by vocalist and guitarist Stew Jackson. they released their first album in 2008, but it is with their second, The Pines, that they truly found their niche. their sound is country-meets-old-style-R&B-and-soul, which is something you would

be hard pressed to find elsewhere. the Bristol based outfit each individually enjoy successful musical careers – singer Yolanda Quartey, for example, has toured with Massive attack and sung backing vocals for adele and Dizzee Rascal, but it is together where they feel most at home, creating their own brand of country-inflected jazz.

RH

9Friday November

JaZZ VOICECELEBRATING A CENTURY OF SONG7.30pmBarbicanBRENDaN REIllY / ClaIRE MaRtIN / gWYNEtH HERBERt / IMElDa MaY / JUlIEt ROBERtS / JUNIOR gISCOMBE / NatalIE DUNCaN /pattI aUStINHOSTED BY JOHN SESSIONSMUSICAL DIRECTOR GUY BARKER

London Jazz Festival Orchestra /

Nathan Bray, Tom Rees Roberts, Mike

Lovatt, Martin Shaw trumpets / Barnaby

Dickinson, Alistair White, Mark Frost

trombones / Jamie Talbot, Sam Mayne,

Graeme Blevins, Phil Todd, Alan Barnes

saxophones / Dave Lee, Jim Rattigan French

horns / Sonia Slany, Julian Tear, Debbie

Preece, Harriet Davies, Dai Emmanuel,

Christina Emmanuel, Alison Dods, Ellen

Blair 1st violins / Simon Smith, Anna

Szabo, Yu Yasuoko-Finch, Jonathan

Truscot, Neil McTaggart, Clare Connor

2nd violins / Steve Tees, Elisa Bergersen,

George Robertson, Jon Thorne viola / Nick

Cooper, Nick Holland, Sophie Harris,

Joely Koos celli / Dave Newton Piano / Mitch

Dalton Guitar / Chris Hill Bass / Ralph

Salmins Drums / Helen Tunstall Harp

the lJF’s opening-night extravaganza ‘Jazz Voice’ has become a symbol of the Festival – for its celebration of humanity’s most widely-shared musical instrument, for its genre-busting cast of charismatic vocalists, and for its variety and virtuosity. But like a lot of good recipes, this one is simple. take a list of classic songs with some kind of calendar connection – maybe the songwriter’s centenary or the birthday of a number one hit – to the ‘Jazz Voice’ concert date. then invite a list of classy vocalists (Jamie Cullum, paloma Faith, and Kurt Elling have been among the stars of earlier years) and match them up. Stir in a combined strings ensemble and jazz big band under the direction of guy Barker, who writes arrangements tailored to every performer and every song.

the 2012 crop of ‘Jazz Voice’ artists, like their predecessors, are originals who can 04

londonjazzfestival.org.uk

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Cecilia Stalin

thank you to everyone who has contributed towards the costs of new arrangements for this year’s

Jazz Voice, which make the evening so distinctive:

Katie HannentRichard greenwood

Jenny KayBrian KirklandJohn Mcgloin

Jane Selvaand to our other donors who wish

to remain anonymous.

also be revealing interpreters of much-loved and much-travelled songs. With her effortless swing, warm tone, and flawless technique, the British singer Claire Martin might seem like one of this year’s most traditionally jazz-rooted artists. But though the former drama student and teenage cruise-liner entertainer has been a world-class interpreter of classic songs for two decades, Martin’s varied albums since her debut in 1991 have ranged way beyond the american Songbook – to include wry originals, Bob Dorough’s hipster bop, the poignancy of Noel Coward, the vision of Hendrix and Joni Mitchell, and the compositions of a vivacious regular  partner, songwriter/pianist Sir Richard Rodney Bennett.

the jazz world discovered london-born gwyneth Herbert a decade after Claire Martin, when she had a briefly glamorous major-label  launch as a British entry in the low-lights world of Diana Krall and Norah Jones in 2004. the mainstream flirtation didn’t last, because although Herbert’s sumptuous contralto can refashion a standard with quirky intelligence, it’s her own highly autobiographical songwriting (often capturing scenes of the Hackney streetlife around her home) that has brought comparisons with Janis Ian, Ray Davies, even tom Waits, on such self-penned ventures as 2007s Between Me And The Wardrobe, and in 2009 All The Ghosts.

Composer, producer and singer Brendan Reilly was raised in the United States, twice played Monterey’s famous jazz festival and

regularly worked the New York nightclubs before moving to Europe at 20. Reilly brings to ‘Jazz Voice’ a rich experience in soul and gospel music (he was soloist with New York’s Metro Mass gospel Choir, and has worked both as a performer and producer in soul, R&B and pop settings). He’s also the quickwitted jazz improviser who can trade scat phrasing with Ian Shaw in the UK vocal supergroup BlINQ, the relaxed ballad singer who can operate close to the majestic tony Bennett’s territory and the dynamic voice fronting dance sensations Basement Jaxx.

Just as versatile is Junior giscombe, a singer and producer raised on doo-wop, soul, Motown and reggae, who signed to phonogram Records and had a transatlantic hit with ‘Mama Used to Say’ in 1982 – following which, he became the first black British artist on the american variety show ‘Soul train’, and receiver of a Billboard ‘Best Newcomer award’ from James Brown. Junior also contributed successful original songs to the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack, and to the lighthouse Family’s 1995 multi-million seller Ocean Drive.

But if ‘Jazz Voice’ always presents experienced creators with long CVs, it has always invited gifted newcomers too. Natalie Duncan only released her first album (Devil In Me) this year, but the self-possessed 23 year-old  with English, Jamaican and greek family roots, has already been put in a personal space somewhere between  Radiohead and Nina Simone, and acknowledges influences from pink Floyd and lauryn Hill to gil Scott-

Heron. Duncan’s unique mixes of blues, soul and classical music were discovered by Decca Records’ Simon gavin when she was playing a Nottingham pub in 2010, and subsequent collaboration with goldie on the Metalheadz producer’s single ‘Freedom’ has accelerated this fearless original’s rapid rise. 

Dublin-raised singer, songwriter, bodhran drummer and guitarist Imelda May similarly steered her own course. From being a nine year-old rockabilly fan when the rest of her class were into Wet Wet Wet, to an art student devoted to Elmore James and Billie Holiday, she is a bandleader whose power and energy attracted the attention of Jools Holland, then an audience on both sides of the atlantic. Her 2008 album Love Tattoo went triple platinum, and her songs on 2010s Mayhem have been compared to pJ Harvey and Chrissie Hynde.

Juliet Roberts is another ‘Jazz Voice’ guest capable of combining blues and soul power with a contemplative delicacy. the london-born singer has moved freely between musical styles in a career that began in 1983 (when she performed on the Funkmasters’ hit ‘It’s Over’), took in four years with popular jazz-dance ensemble Working Week, and subequently house music, jazz, R&B and contemporary soul. 

american stars are also a key component of the evening. patti austin made her debut at Harlem’s famous apollo theater when she was just four years old, and had a raft of R&B hits for Quincy Jones’ Qwest label in the 1970s

and ‘80s – before revealing her versatility as a jazz standards-singer on her 1988 album The Real Me. austin has duetted with stars from Michael Jackson and luther Vandross to Johnny Mathis, and comes to ‘Jazz Voice’ fresh from performing alongside Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and many other stars at the thelonious Monk International annual Competition in Washington DC.

Holding it all together is the inimitable John Sessions, this year’s ‘Jazz Voice’ MC. perfectly fitting the jazz bill as an uncannily gifted improviser, Sessions came up on the alternative-comedy circuit of the early 1980s – often sharing a double-bill with French and Saunders – and became the first regular contestant on the panel-show ‘Whose line Is It anyway?’ Following the improv tV show ‘John Sessions’ in 1989, he moved increasingly to straight acting, but he has also appeared on the BBC Radio 3 show ‘private passions’ (so convincing as a 112 year-old Viennese percussionist who knew Brahms and Schoenberg that some listeners believed him), and as a regular on ‘QI’. 

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There will be one interval of 20 mins

This event will be broadcast on Radio 3 from 7.30pm. bbc.co.uk/radio3

05londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Imelda May by Chris Clor patti austin by Carol Friedm

an

Imelda M

ay by Chris Clor

aMBROSE aKINMUSIRE QUINtEt+ EMpIRICal7.30pmSouthbank Centre/Queen Elizabeth Hall

Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet / Ambrose

Akinmusire trumpet / Walter Smith III saxophone

/ Sam Harris piano / Harish Raghavan bass /

Justin Brown drums

Empirical / Nathaniel Facey saxophone /

Tom Farmer bass / Lewis Wright vibes / Shane

Forbes drums with Benyounes Quartet / Zara

Benyounes violin / Emily Holland violin / Sara

Roberts viola / Kim Vaughan cello

With his debut album for Blue Note, When the Heart Emerges Glistening, the young american trumpeter ambrose akinmusire stretched the vocabularies of those trying to describe his startling abilities. as a soloist, akinmusire was a rare combination of blazing power, graceful long-lined fluency and expressive intimacy – and in the latter mood he could bring a packed room to hypnotised silence through the flute-like purity and high-register steadiness of his low-volume playing, often unaccompanied. as a bandleader, akinmusire had drawn a group of old friends and long-time associates (with gifted saxophonist Walter Smith III and the deceptively low-key young

pianist Sam Harris frequently among them) into a partnership of such alert responsiveness as to invite comparisons with the famous mid-1960s Miles Davis Quintet. akinmusire was raised in California, played piano and then trumpet, performed with jazz stars of the stature of Steve Coleman (on a European tour with the technically taxing Five Elements band) and the late Joe Henderson all before he was 18. He took both jazz and classical studies at the Manhattan School of Music and he won awards at both the Carmine Caruso International Jazz trumpet Solo Competition and the thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2007, and has since worked with rising bass/vocal star Esperanza Spalding, New York downtown artists including David Binney and John Escreet, and with acclaimed piano pioneers Jason Moran and Vijay Iyer.

In 2007, Courtney pine called Empirical ‘the most exciting jazz band to come out of the UK’, and the following year this vibrant young quintet (some were still at college) won a standing ovation at the IaJE jazz-educators’ convention in toronto, and played the JVC Jazz Festival in New York. the 2012 lineup features original members Nathaniel Facey on alto saxophone and Shane Forbes on drums (long-time South london playing partners and former members of tomorrow’s Warriors) with bassist tom Farmer, a former member of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and the Heritage Orchestra. the group’s newer recruit is the young vibraphone

virtuoso lewis Wright, a frequent globetrotting accompanist to vocal star Melody gardot. For this performance, Empirical are joined by the Benyounes String Quartet, an award-winning young ensemble they met whilst participating in the cross-genre ‘Colab’ project at the trinity laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. this is the first major performance of the music they made together – deploying both classical compositional techniques and improvisation – during that adventurous week. 

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EFG International and the London Jazz Festival have together created the EFG International Excellence

Series, now in its fifth year – a programme of four

world-class performances from some of the leading

lights in jazz today.

EFG Private Bank Limited, Leconfield House, Curzon Street, London W1J 5JB, Tel + 44 20 7491 9111. EFG Private Bank Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services

Authority and a member of the London Stock Exchange. Registered in England and Wales no. 2321802. Registered o�ce as above. Member of EFG International. www.efginternational.com

In the UK: EFG Private Bank Limited

Festival Picks

KEITH GAPPHead of Strategic Marketing &

Communications, EFg International

Jazz VoiceFri 9 Barbican

Simply one of the greatest evenings of music of the whole year

Esperanza Spalding thu 15 Royal Festival Hall

Astonishing at the Festival two years ago, and can’t wait for more

Asian Jazz All-Stars Power Quartet With Jeremy Monteiro

Sun 18 pizzaExpress Jazz Club I have seen Jeremy perform across much of Asia, and great to see him

in London

Friday 9 November

tigran Ham

asyan by Vahan Stepanyan

Empirical

tIgRaN HaMaSYaN7.30pm Wigmore Hall

Tigran Hamasyan piano /

Gayane Movsisyan guest vocals

pianist tigran Hamasyan was born in gyumri, armenia in 1987. He later relocated to los angeles with his family where he began to make contact with the jazz community and linked up with such musicians as saxophonist Ben Wendel and drummer Nate Wood, who continue to play with him today. In 2006 tigran won the top prize at the prestigious thelonious Monk Jazz piano Competition and second place in the Martial Solal International Jazz

Competition in paris. His most recent album, A Fable (Universal) is a solo album mainly influenced by the armenian folk tradition and even on his most overt jazz compositions and renditions of well-known jazz standards, he often decorates his improvisations with melodies born from Middle Eastern and Western scales and traditions.

RH

There will be no interval in this concert

MaRa CaRlYlE WITH JON SNOW+ ROBI FaRKaS & BRIaN KEllOCK7.45pmSouthbank Centre/purcell Room

Mara Carlyle vocals, ukulele, saw /

Nick Ramm piano / Tom Herbert bass /

Jon Snow guest vocals

Robi Farkas violin / Brian Kellock piano

Mara Carlyle is an English singer-songwriter and arranger with a distinct fragility to her voice. through various ensembles, she has sung her way through church music, jazz, bluegrass, opera and electronica, elements all of which can be heard in her music today. Her second album, Floreat, meaning ‘let it Flourish’ was released in august 2011 to critical acclaim. Carlyle has a delicate relationship with jazz, but comes to it from a different background, making for deeply personal jazz-infused music. Jon Snow will be joining her for a couple of numbers, demonstrating his impressive baritone vocals alongside her quirky performance and delivery. Her tentative yet firm approach to songwriting give her the freedom to connect with jazz in a beguiling manner wholly her own.

Brian Kellock is one of the best mainstream jazz pianists around. His versatility is a perfect match for gypsy and classical violinist Robert Farkas, who also plays accordion, guitar and piano. Farkas became the youngest lead violinist and soloist of the Budapest gypsy Symphony Orchestra and has played in many well renowned Balkan, gypsy and rock bands. Despite coming from two distinctly different musical backgrounds, the pair found common ground in their uncanny understanding of the mix between classical, jazz and improvised music.

RH

07londonjazzfestival.org.uk

tigran Ham

asyan by Vahan Stepanyan

Mara Carlyle by Lucy pope

Saturday NovemberSEB ROCHFORD WORKSHOp11am DO Southbank Centre/level 3 Function Room

Drummer Seb Rochford leads a workshop for young players looking to improve on their technique. a fantastic opportunity to pick up some tips from one of the UK’s best.

Ages 11–16. Suitable for drummers of all

levels. Bring your own sticks

gREg OSBY talK

& MICHaEl JaNISCHMASTERCLASSMiddaySouthbank Centre/level 5 Function Room

US jazz saxophonist greg Osby and bassist Michael Janisch put a handful of jazz students from london’s conservatoires through their paces in a performance critique in front of a live audience.

There will be an opportunity for a Q&A session

with the artists

10 SOlD OUt

08

londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Seb Rochford by Suki Dhanda

NatIONal YOUtH JaZZ ORCHEStRa2pmSouthbank Centre/purcell Room

Helen Wilson flute / Phil Meadows, Jim

Gold, Nadim Teimoori, Riley Ston-Longeran,

Chris Whiter saxophones / Louis Dowdswell,

Adam Chatterton, Nick Dewhurst, Tom Dennis,

James Copus trumpets / Anna Drysdale horn /

Peter Whitehouse trombone / Chris Eldred piano

/ Rob Luft guitar / Scott Chapman drums /

Felix Higgenbottom percussion

the influential National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO) is now 47 years old, but it continues to recruit the coming stars of British jazz from the country’s schools and colleges, and to present a diverse and punchy professional show that needs no allowances to be made for the tender ages of its players. the late amy Winehouse once sang with NYJO, and eminent performer/composers guy Barker and Julian arguelles are former members. the ensemble was founded (at first as the  london Schools Jazz Orchestra) by a former RaF bandsman, Bill ashton, and it became a full-time professional organisation as the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in 1974. Over the years, the band has backed jazz stars including Shorty Rogers and John Dankworth, and recorded some 40 albums. Bill ashton retired as musical director in 2011 – having received an OBE, a BBC Radio 2 award for Services to Jazz and the all party parliamentary Jazz appreciation group’s Special award in 2007 – to be succeeded by trumpeter and Royal College of Music jazz educator Mark armstrong. In 2012, NYJO released one of its boldest recordings The Change, a mix of classic big-band material, innovative pieces by present members, and works by leading British composers. For this concert, the band continues the latter tradition, featuring music by early pioneers of independent British composition – tubby Hayes, Stan tracey and Victor Feldman – and a cutting-edge original from the contemporary scene, Jason Yarde. 

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There will be no interval in this concert

JaZZ lINE-Up FREE

WITHODDARRANGMICHAEL JANISCH & ARUAN ORTIZ QUINTETTIGRAN HAMASYANHOStED BY KEVIN lE gENDRE3.30pmSouthbank Centre/the Clore Ballroom

the long partnership between the london Jazz Festival and BBC Radio 3 has played a key role in the lJF’s evolution, and spreading of its message over the years. Radio 3’s ‘Jazz line-Up’, with its popular balance of the established and the innovative has regularly broadcast music and interviews from Festival stars and newcomers alike, and returns this year for the now traditional visits on the event’s two Saturday afternoons.

Hosted by Kevin le gendre, this edition will feature three performances. Oddarrang are an intriguing Finnish cross-over band, making their lJF debut. they meld influences from jazz, classical, world and postmodern rock music, drawing comparisons with Nordic superstars Björk and Sigur Ros. the second performance will be from american double-bassist Michael Janisch with Cuban pianist aruan Ortiz’s Quintet. Rounding up the line-up will be armenian pianist tigran Hamasyan who mixes traditional folk with his jazz compositions born from Middle Eastern and western scales.

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This event will be broadcast in Jazz Line-Up on Sun 11 Nov. bbc.co.uk/radio3

FEaSt OF JaZZ FIlMSouthbank Centre/Queen Elizabeth Hall

Over the course of one day come and explore the lives of three jazz legends in three highly acclaimed films. One £10 ticket provides entry to eight hours

of the london Jazz Festival’s Feast of Jazz Film.

BaRBaRa tHOMpSONpLAYING AGAINST TIME 2pm | (80 mins)

British reeds-player and composer Barbara thompson was a prominent original of the British jazz generation emerging in the late 1960s – when old divisions between styles and approaches were beginning to loosen. a harmonically-advanced saxophonist and a fine flautist too, she has moved freely between postbop, jazz-rock and classical music, and launched her long-running, multi-stylistic paraphernalia band with drummer husband Jon Hiseman in 1972. thompson was diagnosed with parkinson’s Disease in 1997 and director Mike Dibbs‘ heartwarming and illuminating film mixes archive of her earlier work with her work and life in more recent times – necessarily playing less, but composing extensively, running workshops, and returning with cautious optimism to the concert stage in 2010 with the help of improving medication.

SONNY ROllINSBEYOND THE NOTES 5pm | (75 mins)

Few documentary directors could be better-placed to survey the extraordinary life of the now octogenarian saxophone master Sonny Rollins than Dick Fontaine. Over 40 years ago, as a young film-maker, jazz fan and aspiring musician, Fontaine’s camera caught Rollins on one of the solitary practice sessions on Manhattan’s Williamsburg Bridge that have been part of jazz folklore ever since. Fontaine was sensitive to the saxophone perfectionist’s desire to withdraw from the frenetic world of ‘the jazz life’ and devotedly hone his craft – and the same affectionate respect has inspired Sonny Rollins, Beyond The Notes, a subtle splicing of archive, live and interview material built around Rollins’ remarkable 80th birthday concert in New York, when his great creative peer and fellow-saxist Ornette Coleman joined him on stage. although screened on BBC Four earlier this year, this film receives its UK feature length premiere at the london Jazz Festival.

MICHEl pEtRUCIaNNI 8pm | (102 mins)

From the early 1980s to his death at the age of 37 in 1999, the French pianist Michel petrucianni captivated fellow musicians and audiences alike by his virtuosity at the keyboard, the affection with which he played in a sumptuously romantic style influenced by Bill Evans and by the strength and optimism with which he faced the congenital bone-wasting disease that gave him his miniscule frame and eventually led to his death. as an enthusiastic teenage virtuoso, petrucianni encouraged the reclusive saxophonist Charles lloyd out of retirement, and he had a glittering jazz career in the company of Jim Hall, Roy Haynes, Wayne Shorter among others in the ‘80s. this screening will also include a solo-piano tribute to petrucianni from fellow-countryman pierre de Bethmann.

aFtERglOW 2pm & 5pm | (11 mins)

Screening before Barbara Thompson Playing Against Time

& Sonny Rollins Beyond The Notes

Baff akoto’s ten-minute short film Afterglow is a drama set in london’s contemporary jazz world, exploring the emerging tensions between a group of friends faced with life-changing choices. Starring anthony Welsh, trenyce Cobbins and Julien Beramis, Afterglow unfolds against the background of powerful score by abram Wilson, the gifted london-resident trumpeter and composer who died this year. this vivid glimpse of an often hidden subculture also features an appearance by singer-songwriter ayanna Witter-Johnson, and proceeds from its online release go to the abram Wilson Foundation, abramwilson.com.

JF

09londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Festival picks

HYPERPOTAMUSartist

Brad Mehldau TrioWed 14 Barbican

Muscular jazz piano with a twist of Debussian pace, a long time

favourite

Sonny RollinsFri 16 Barbican

My Dad’s sole reason to start playing saxophone

Paco De LuciaFri 16 Royal Festival Hall

As a fellow Spaniard, it is my duty not to miss this seminal

occasion. A god of the six strings

Michel petrucciani by Jeffrey Helwig

SCENE FRANCE FREE

aNNE paCEO tRIpHaSE+ StEpHaNE BElMONDO QUaRtEt4pmBarbican Freestage

Anne Paceo Triphase / Leonardo Montana

piano / Joan Eche-Puig bass / Anne Paceo drums

Stephane Belmondo Quartet / Stephane

Belmondo trumpet / Kirk Lightsey piano, flute /

Sylvain Romano double bass / Tony Rabeson

drums

two UK debuts from exceptional drummer anne paceo and trumpeter Stephane Belmondo. at only 27 years old anne paceo has already performed in over 34 countries and won many awards. She started playing the drums when she was nine and took her first steps into the world of jazz at the age of 12 at the Children for Jazz festival at Barcelonnette, where she took part in master classes led by Dianne Reeves, Kenny garrett and Ravi Coltrane.  as well as prolifically playing in the bands of leading musicians including China Moses, andy Sheppard and Yaron Herman, anne leads her own band triphase – a trio that includes herself, pianist leonardo Montana and bassist Joan Eche-puig. they perform here from their latest self-titled album.

Stephane Belmondo is an award winning French jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and drummer. He comes from a musical family, who instilled the importance of hard work and practice into the young musician from an early age. the gifted multi-instrumentalist studied in the trumpet class at the Marseille Conservatoire and has subsequently performed alongside many internationally renowned musicians, including a stint in Dee Dee Bridgewater’s trio. He recorded his first solo album, Wonderland, on which he revisited Stevie Wonder songs and won himself two awards at the French Victoires du Jazz awards. Here, his quartet make their lJF debut performing from their Verve album The Same As It Never Was Before.

RH

WaY IN tO tHE FREE

WaY OUt: paRt I talK

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF JAZZWItH alEXaNDER HaWKINS & COREY MWaMBa5.30pmSouthbank Centre/the Front Room

Composer/pianist alexander Hawkins and composer/vibes player Corey Mwamba discuss and debate their own perspective on the history of jazz, combining lively chat with excerpts from albums they’ve grown up listening to and occasional live interjections.

In the first instalment, alexander and Corey explore the deep history of jazz from its birth in the 19th century american South, through to the classic jazz of the 20s, the swing era of the 30s and up to the revolutionary evolution of bebop in the 40s.

You can catch Part II on Sun 11 Nov, see p.13

ODDaRRaNg FREE

6pmSouthbank Centre/the Clore Ballroom

Oddarrang / Olavi Louhivuori leader, piano,

drums / Ilmari Pohjola trombone, vocals / Lasse

Sakara guitar / Osmo Ikonen cello, vocals / Lasse

Lindgren acoustic bass

the recent work of performers including the virtuosic jazz/classical pianist Iiro Rantala and imaginative trumpeter/composer Verneri pohjola has drawn wider attention to the creativity of upcoming musicians in Finland – a location in which the spacious impressionism of Scandinavian jazz, the classical traditions of old Europe and Russia, and the western edge of experimental rock and electronica seem to fuse with a particular vividness. Electro-acoustic group Oddarrang, with its unusual line-up including cello, synths and brass, was founded by drummer, pianist and composer Olavi louhivuori, who has worked with polish jazz legend tomasz Stanko, the american originals Marilyn Crispell and anthony Braxton, and many other major creators. Oddarrang’s 2007 debut Music Illustrated won the prestigious Emma award in Finland, and 2011s Cathedral has won praise for its mix of folk-musical lyricism, wordless vocals, Nordic spaciousness, restrained electronic tone-poetry, and bursts of prog-rock power.

JF

MElODY gaRDOt + lUISa SOBRal7.30pmBarbican

Melody Gardot vocals, Irwin Hall saxophone,

clarinet, flute / Mitchell Long guitar, backing

vocals / Stephan Braun cello, bass / Bryan Brock

percussion / Chuck Staab musical director, drums,

percussion

Luisa Sobral vocals, guitar, harp /

João Hasselberg bass /

Happy accidents and unhappy ones have been the story of Melody gardot’s young life. When she ran out of petrol at 16 on a drive to philadelphia, she did an impromptu piano-bar gig to raise money for a refuel – which led to regular work performing her mother’s favourite songs and her own, from the Mamas and the papas to Radiohead. three years later, as a fashion student with music as a hobby, a bicycling gardot was almost killed when a car jumped a light; but she returned to her music as therapy in a depressing year of physical rehab and terrifying memory losses. gardot took up guitar (playing piano was too painful) and a stream of original songs began to pour out.

pennsylvania radio station WXpN eased her path to Universal and then Verve Records, and the haunting debut album Worrisome Heart followed in 2008. gardot’s piaf-like vibrato and whisper-quiet delivery struck an immediate chord with the public, and My One and Only Thrill (with producer larry Klein) redoubled the effect. More recently, she has spent an independent year visiting Morocco, portugal, argentina and Brazil. New gardot songs inspired by cultures for which music is central to everyday life – as it became for the singer during her darkest days – have come together with guitarist and producer Heitor pereira’s help for this year’s album The Absence.

like Melody gardot, lisbon-born luísa Sobral is a singer-songwriter with deep jazz affiliations but broad tastes, who has polished the delicate art of doing more with less. like gardot, she evokes vivid images of time and place in her songs, and believes that a good story and a memorable melody sung with devotion can allow one performer to do the work of an orchestra. Sobral shone in a portuguese tV talent show in 2003, when she was 16, and she began jazz studies at Boston’s Berklee School of Music two years later. Brazilian samba songs, the vocal legacies not only of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald but also Björk and Maria Joao, a passion for French movies – they all came together in Sobral’s freewheeling imagination for her admired 2011 album The Cherry On My Cake.

JF

SOlD OUtQUEUE FOR

REtURNS

10

londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Saturday 10 November

Festival Picks

FIONA TALKINGTONBBC Radio 3 presenter

Bushman’s Revenge / Synkoke / Albatrosh

Fri 9 the VortexWhat’s all this fuss about

Norwegian music? Here are three bands who’ll tell you!

Fyfe Dangerfield& Rory SimmonsWed 14 the Forge

Very proud this duo was born in Studio 80A of BBC Broadcasting

House for a Late Junction session. Now they’ve taken

wings and flown

SupersilentFeat. John Paul Jones

Sun 18 Village UndergroundI was there, at the Punkt

Festival, when these four music super-heroes played their very first notes together. I saw the

looks on their faces. The rest is becoming history

Stephane Belmondo by Laurent Seroussi

anne paceo triphase by Gala

A WEEKEND WITHlUCINDa WIllIaMS+ BHI BHIMaN7.30pmSouthbank Centre/Royal Festival Hall

Lucinda Williams artist / Doug Pettibone

guitar, vocals / David Sutton bass, vocals / Butch

Norton drums, vocals

Bhi Bhiman guitar, vocals

Singer songwriter lucinda Williams has been recording her own brand of american rock, folk, blues and country music for over forty years. louisiana born and the daughter of a poet and an amateur pianist, she has been playing guitar since she was 12 years old. Williams has always loved jazz and subtle inflections of the genre can be heard in her work. throughout her career she has managed to remain relevant; her songwriting is rooted in tradition, yet is also always relatable. Her reputation as a consummate musician is unquestioned and she was named as america’s best songwriter by Time magazine in 2002 and also won her third grammy that same year. today, she continues to evolve as an artist, exploring new territory. Whether she is playing new or old material, she pours all her years of experience into every performance. Williams released her latest album, Blessed, in March last year. performing from her entire back catalogue and beyond, these gigs will be a rare and insightful window into the mind of one of the world’s greatest singer-songwriters.

Bhi Bhiman is an american singer-songwriter who brings a level of experience to his vocal delivery that belies his young age. Born in St. louis, Missouri, he was originally inspired by Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder. On his album Bhiman, out now on tummy touch, he sings from the perspective of a number of different characters, such as a North Korean prisoner, a railroad-riding hobo and a jealous lover.

RH

Also on Sun 11 Nov

MICHaEl JaNISCH & aRUaN ORItZ QUINtEtWITH GREG OSBY+ RUaRIDH pattISON7.45pmSouthbank Centre/purcell Room

Michael Janisch & Aruan Ortiz Quintet /

Michael Janisch double bass / Aruan Ortiz piano

/ Greg Osby alto saxophone / Raynald Colom

trumpet / Rudy Royston drums

Ruaridh Pattison saxophone / Malcolm

Edmonstone piano / Andrew Robb double bass /

Andrew Bain drums

Michael Janisch, the american double-bassist, has made a big difference to the British jazz scene both on and off the bandstand since his arrival in the UK in 2005. the former Minnesota sports major took up acoustic bass at 20 after injury halted his football and athletics career, and he went on to study at Boston’s Berklee College and play in New York before relocating to london as a performer and teacher in 2005. Janisch has a big sound reminiscent of such double-bass heroes as Charles Mingus or Ray Brown, and the listening skills to complement the work of many other leaders. But he’s also an energetic tour-promoter, founder of his own Whirlwind Records label, and a creative bandleader, who has organised tours for original line-ups joining leading British and american players. this year, Whirlwind releases the live album Banned in London, recorded at the pizzaExpress Jazz Club last year, and featuring the musicians in this concert. Janisch co-leads the group with former Berklee friend and fellow-player, Cuban pianist aruan Ortiz. alongside them are Spanish trumpeter Raynald Colum, and drummer Rudy Royston, who was recently in the UK with Bill Frisell – plus a star guest in St. louis-raised saxophonist greg Osby, who has worked with such innovators as Jack DeJohnette, Steve Coleman, and Jason Moran and is at ease with both traditional materials and in experimental formats, and freely fuses contemporary genres as both an improviser and a leader.

If Bobby Wellins or the lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra’s Joe temperley confirm just how long the small Scottish jazz scene has been producing world-class saxophonists, the emergence of 20 year-old Ruaridh pattison confirms the process is still going strong. pattison won the title of Young Scottish Jazz Musician of the Year in 2011 with performances of Jackie Mclean’s ‘little Melonae’ and Ornette Coleman’s ‘tears Inside’. He fell in love with the saxophone at six years old (when he heard one played on Blue peter), studied the playing of the late Michael Brecker, Charlie parker, lee Konitz, tim Berne, and many more, and performed in his teens with the Fife Youth Jazz Orchestra. pattison recently came to london to take up saxophone studies with Jean toussaint at the guildhall.

JF

30 YEaRS OF tHE WEStBROOK tRIO8pmKings place/Hall two

Mike Westbrook piano / Kate Westbrook

vocals / Chris Biscoe saxophone

Jazz composers that treat the whole world’s music as their source material are commonplace today, but 40 years ago the norm was that jazz pieces usually grew from jazz roots. the early history of the music goes very deep with British composer Mike Westbrook too – some of his most memorable large-scale works have been in celebration of Duke Ellington. But since his emergence as a major force in the late 1960s, former plymouth art-student Westbrook has also invited improvisers to experiment with everything from brass band music, to settings of William Blake poems, 1930s Berlin cabaret, music-theatre, grand opera and much more. With his vocalist and lyric-writer wife Kate Westbrook, he has come to be regarded as a crucial figure in the development of British jazz independence, but the pair’s reputation has spread far and wide, and in continental Europe they’re particular favourites. the Westbrook trio – completed by saxophone and clarinet virtuoso Chris Biscoe – is one of the longest-running of their many line-ups, and this year sees the group’s 30th anniversary. Celebrating the landmark with a new album, three into wonderfull, the trio present a compilation of their most vivacious and imaginative work through the decades, including jazz standards, settings of European poetry, and originals from the early albums A Little Westbrook Music and Love For Sale, the more recent Good Friday 1663 and L’Ascenseur/The Lift, and from their archive of previously unreleased work.

JF

There will be an interval of 20 mins

11londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Festival Picks

JOEL MILLSBritish Council

Mara Carlyle with Jon SnowFri 9 purcell Room

Gorgeous voice and songwriting talent. I’m intrigued by her

collaboration with Jon Snow. A must see!

Shabaka Hutchings & The BBC Concert Orchestratue 13 Queen Elizabeth Hall

This one off commission with rising star Shabaka sounds

simply delicious

Get The BlessingSat 17 Jazz Café

Exciting band with great tuneage and a touch of kick-ass spirit

Melody gardot by Shervin Lainez

aruan Oritz

Sunday November

FEMI tEMOWO DO

WORKSHOp11amSouthbank Centre/level 5 Function Room

guitarist/composer Femi temowo leads a workshop on learning to play jazz music without scores, focusing in particular on listening and communication.

Ages 11–16. For all instrumentalists, grade 5

+. Bring your own instrument

BRENDaN REIllY DO BIG SING FaMIlY

2pmBarbican/garden Room

In the first of two Big Sing workshops, Basement Jaxx singer Brendan Reilly leads a fun sing-along vocal workshop, designed for the whole family.

Recommended for ages 12+. Some singing

experience welcome

SCENE FINLAND FREE

BlaCK MOtOR + RaKKa + KUaRa + aNNa-MaRI KäHäRäN ORKEStERI2pm Barbican Freestage

Black Motor / Sami Sippola tenor saxophone/

Ville Rauhala double bass / Simo Laihonen drums

Rakka / Masa Orpana saxophone, clarinet,

flute / Jykä Ahola trumpet / Kusti Vuorinen

accordion / Ville Rauhala double bass / Janne

Tuomi drums

Kuara / Trygve Seim saxophone / Samuli

Mikkonen piano / Markku Ounaskari drums

Anna-Mari Kähärän Orkesteri / Anna-

Mari Kähärä vocals / Marzi Nyman, Jarmo Saari

guitar, vocals / Zarkus Poussa percussion, vocals

Black Motor is an improvising trio from tampere. Founded in 2005, they have released six albums so far and their latest album, Hoojaa, was nominated for an Emma award (Finnish grammy) for jazz album of the year. they primarily mix blues with Finnish folk and have worked with Raoul Björkenheim, Iro Haarla and peter Brötzmann among others.

12

londonjazzfestival.org.uk

11

Festival Picks

JON NEWEY Editor, Jazzwise magazine

Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet

Sat 10 Cafe OtOThe sound of Concorde taking

off: protective clothing advised

John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension

Sun 11 BarbicanSparks will fly as the big Mac

turns it up to eleven

Shabaka Hutchings & The BBC Concert Orchestra

tue 13 Queen Elizabeth HallCutting edge jazz and electronica

enter orchestral orbit

lucinda Williams by James Minchin III

Brendan Reilly

Rakka is a new improvising instrumental quintet, whose first album, Soutu (meaning rowing) was released last year. Even though this particular band is new, the musicians have been playing together in several other combinations since the early 1990s. three of the band members – Vuorinen, Orpana and Rauhala – compose the group’s signature rhythmic music, which is a combination of musical influences from Finnish folk music, old dance hall music, blues, gospel and jazz and includes a lot of improvisation.

Finnish trio Kuara pay homage to Karelians on their intensely focused ECM album Kuara. Finno-Ugric folksongs have become a powerful tool for the relocated population and Kuara have taken inspiration from these folksongs as well as Russian psalms and traditional Scandinavian tunes to create their distinctive sound.

award-winning singer and composer Kähärän blends jazz, folk, pop and poetry in her work. She has won Finland’s prestigious georgie award and the Finland prize from the Ministry of Culture in recognition of an outstanding artistic career. With her all-star quartet she released a self-penned album, which consisted of lyrics from English-language poetry from the 1800s to the present day. the ensemble’s eccentricities and humour are as compelling as their hypnotic sound.

RH

BEatS & pIECES BIg BaND+ ENSEMBlE DENaDa3pm & 7.45pmSouthbank Centre/purcell Room

Beats & Pieces Big Band / Ben Cottrell

musical director / Anthony Brown, Sam Healey,

Ben Watte saxophones / Owen Bryce, Graham

South, Nick Walters trumpets / Tim Cox, Simon

Lodge, Paul Strachan trombones / Patrick Hurley

piano / Anton Hunter guitar / Harrison Wood

bass / Finlay Panter drums

Ensemble Denada / Helge Sunde musical

director, trombone / Frank Brodahl lead trumpet

/ Marius Haltli / trumpet / Anders Eriksson

trumpet, flugelhorn / Arild Hillestad, Erik

Johannessen trombones / Frode Nymo, Peter

Wettre, Borge Are saxophones / Halvorsen alto

saxophone, alto flute, bass clarinet / Nils Jansen

bass sax, contra alto clarinet / Olga Konkova piano

/ Jens Thoresen guitar / Per Mathisen bass /

Hakon Mjaset Johansen drums

two of the hottest big bands led by two of the most talked about young European composers are brought together for these high-energy gigs. led by Ben Cottrell, the 14-piece Beats & pieces outfit features musicians from diverse musical backgrounds, who met while studying in Manchester. Cottrell was chosen as one of eight young creative musicians from across the UK to participate in the 2010/11 edition of the take Five professional development scheme produced by Serious. Recent winners of the Burghausen European Young artists’ Jazz award 2011, both Beats & pieces’ debut album Big Ideas and their live performances continue to be met with widespread critical acclaim, The Guardian wrote, “they couple gale-force collective energy and confidence to startlingly original material (most of it by its rising-star leader Ben Cottrell) that acknowledges big-band traditions while radically modernising them.” their infectious music draws on a wide range of influences from loose tubes to Radiohead to redefine the role of the big band for a new generation.

Joining Beats & pieces are Ensemble Denada, led by trombonist Helge Sunde. the original idea behind Ensemble Denada was to achieve small-band dynamics with three times the number of people, blending high tech instruments into a rousing, creative environment for musicians and composers. Ensemble Denada comprises some of Norway’s most exciting ensemble players and soloists. they merge European tradition with jazz and native Norwegian expressions into a blend of strict composition and free improvisation. the combined gig will feature brand new music from both bands, including specially written pieces by Cottrell and Sunde, inspired by one another’s existing tunes.

RH

3pm – There will be no interval in this concert

7.45pm – There will be an interval in this

concert

WaY IN tO tHE FREE

WaY OUt: paRt II talK

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF JAZZWItH alEXaNDER HaWKINS & COREY MWaMBa5.30pmSouthbank Centre/the Front Room

In the second instalment of this lively discussion, alexander and Corey continue to trail the history of jazz, from 1950s cool and hard bop into the politically charged avant-garde of the 60s and onto the genre defying world that is jazz in the 21st century.

You can catch Part I on Sat 10 Nov, see p.10

A JOURNEY FREE

THROUGH VOICE tHE VOICElaB JaZZ DaY 6pmSouthbank Centre/the Clore Ballroom

the culmination of an intensive and fun day of singing workshops, as part of Southbank Centre’s popular Voicelab series.

A WEEKEND WITHlUCINDa WIllIaMS+ BHI BHIMaN7.30pmSouthbank Centre/Royal Festival Hall

Also on Sat 10. See p.11

13londonjazzfestival.org.uk

A MASTERPIECE RESTOREDAfter years of devoted restoration, the magnificent 245 bedroom St Pancras Renaissance Hotel London offers its guests a world of grandeur, luxury and fantasy behind its fairytale red façade.

stpancrasrenaissance.co.uk

A MASTERPIECE RESTORED

A MASTERPIECE RESTOREDOur 38 Chamber Suites offer the utmost comfort and grandeur.

All Chamber Suites offer guests• Exclusive access to The Chambers Club for breakfast, drinks and snacks across the day

• Butler Service • Dedicated VIP Eurostar Transfer Service • Complimentary Male Wet Shave at Melogy Male Grooming • Priority table reservations at The Gilbert Scott Restaurant

St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, Euston Road, London NW1 2AR telephone: +44 (0)20 7841 3540

stpancrasrenaissance.co.uk

Festival Picks

LIONEL BENBASSATDirector of Marketing & Brand,

Eurostar

Beats & Pieces Big Band+ Ensemble Denada

Sun 11 purcell RoomJazzy and funky, fun and

original, all it takes for a great big band live performance

Sonny RollinsFri 16 Barbican

Tenor Madness, He’s the Colossus. A living Legend. I

would not want to miss his 2012 Festival appearance

SupersilentFeat. John Paul Jones

Sun 18 Village UndergroundImprovisation is fascinating.

Their credo is almost a dogma, they only meet on stage, that’s

cool and bold

JOHN MclaUgHlIN & tHE 4tH DIMENSION+ aRUN gHOSH & tHE tWIN tENORS7.30pmBarbican

John McLaughlin & The 4th Dimension /

John McLaughlin guitar / Etienne Mbappé electric

bass / Gary Husband keys / Ranjit Barot drums

Arun Ghosh & The Twin Tenors / Arun

Ghosh clarinet / Idris Rahman, Wayne Francis

saxophones / Neil Charles bass / Rastko Rasic

drums

plenty of musicians play very fast electric guitar – but not many fuel the speed and drama from such a deep reservoir of cultural references, diverse musical traditions and work alongside modern giants as John Mclaughlin. Yorkshire-born Mclaughlin possesses the kind of virtuosity that goes way beyond dexterity. Classical violin studies preceded self-education on the guitar – in flamenco, jazz, and Django Reinhardt’s swing – in his teens, and he was a key figure in london’s blues and R&B-influenced jazz scene of the 60s.

Experiences with Cream’s Jack Bruce in the graham Bond Organisation, jams with Jimi Hendrix, and jazz adventures with saxophonist John Surman on the 1969 album Extrapolation led to work in the States with brilliant american drummer tony Williams’ lifetime fusion group, and then to Miles Davis, and the landmark albums In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew. Mclaughlin later explored unique fusions of jazz, rock and Indian music in his Mahavishnu Orchestra and Shakti groups, and played flamenco with paco de lucia – but his current 4th Dimension quartet draws all his many experiences together, mixing raw blues grooves with classical elegance, sitar-like guitar phrasing, and hard-driving world-funk. Cross-genre Indian drummer Ranjit Barot, virtuoso bass guitarist Etienne M’Bappe, and the powerful jazz and funk keyboardist gary Husband (known to many in his parallel life on drums with level 42) complete the line-up. Nearing 70 but with his playing still on fire, Mclaughlin calls his new album Now Here This, ‘the culmination of my life’s work till now.’

the musicality and ecstatic energy of young clarinettist arun ghosh turns new audiences on to his vivacious and constantly surprising music everywhere he goes. ghosh, who describes himself as ‘conceived in Calcutta, bred in Bolton, matured in Manchester and now living in london’, has created his own stories in sound to reflect all that diversity – so his Indo-Jazz Sextet splice South asian melodies, Western street-grooves, dub-reggae, free-jazz and more, a dynamic live experience that has become a big draw on the UK circuit. ghosh’s jubilant tunes are an unmistakeable invitation to dance, but his group is also capable of a quietly passionate lyricism and the patient atmospherics of ambient music.

JF

CElEBRatINg gIl EVaNS 7.30pmSouthbank Centre/Queen Elizabeth Hall

Trinity Laban Contemporary Jazz

Ensemble / Directed by Mark Lockheart with

special guest Oren Marshall

CJE 1 (1960s Gil) / Laura Jurd, Tom Dennis

trumpets / Rosie Turton, Rob Taylor, Oli Haylett

Trombones / Thomas Kelly tuba / Greg Sinclair

alto saxophone / Mike Underwood tenor saxophone,

flute / Jennah Smart flute / Louis Thomas bass /

Peter Hill, Emmanuel Adelabu drums, percussion

/ Artie Zaitz guitar / Elliot Galvin piano

CJE 2 (Electric Gil) / Mike Soper, Laura

Jurd trumpets / Lucy Gray french horn / Rosie

Turton trombone / Oren Marshall tuba / Greg

Sinclair, Leo Aarons-Richardson, Theo

Erskine saxophones / Conor Chaplin, Jack

Polley electric bass / Corrie Dick, Peter Hill

drums, percussion / James Kitchman, Artie

Zaitz guitar / Ben Corrigan electronics / Sam

James piano / Elliot Galvin nord synthesizer

the saxophonist lee Konitz once wrote in a liner-note for an album with gil Evans, that ‘gil was not a composer in the usual sense of the word. He was not a piano player in the usual sense, either. In fact, gil was not your usual kind of man. He was a poet all the way from morning to night.’ gil Evans’ luminous, almost casually-painted backdrops for Miles Davis’ trumpet on classic jazz albums all the way from Birth of the Cool to Sketches of Spain represent some of the most atmospheric big-band writing in jazz. Evans’ impact on jazz composition is still immense, and polar Bear saxophonist Mark lockheart directs the Contemporary Jazz Ensemble from trinity laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance on a special tribute. the first half of this concert features thrilling material from Evans’ 1961 masterpiece Out of the Cool, much of it work that has never been performed in the UK before. the second half showcases more rock-oriented Evans pieces including music from the 1970s albums Svengali and Gil Evans Plays The Music of Jimi Hendrix. this shift to a harder-hitting and more electric jazz sound was controversial for some fans at the time, but time proved the old maestro right, through such moving reinventions as his arrangements of J Hendrix’s ‘little Wing’, and ‘Up From the Skies’. For lJF producers Serious, this is a doubly nostalgic occasion – in its earliest guise, the company produced Evans’ 75th birthday concert at the Hammersmith Odeon, which was recorded by Radio 3. 

JF

There will be an interval of 20 mins

HERBIE HaNCOCK: plUggED INSOLO EXpLORATIONS 7.30pm Southbank Centre/Royal Festival Hall

If you wanted to put money on the most likely jazz pianist to unleash stunning improvisations whilst simultaneously reinventing the logistics of unaccompanied keyboard performance, Herbie Hancock would be a safe bet. Hancock is one of the most popular, innovative – and much-sampled – artists jazz has ever produced. He played Mozart with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when he was eleven, created a latin-pop chart hit with one of his first original themes (‘Watermelon Man’, written when he was 22), was a lynchpin of what the cognoscenti calls Miles Davis’ ‘second great quintet’ (from 1963 to ’69), and led some of the most memorable recording sessions of the 1960s with the original albums Empyrean Isles and Maiden Voyage. In the 1970s, the self-confessed gadget fan went on to develop new combinations of electric and acoustic sounds, and was one of the first jazz pianists to improvise with synthesisers. He created spacey and atmospheric new jazz with his Mwandishi sextet, and infectious jazz-funk with Headhunters in that decade, and won a grammy in 1983 for his hit single ‘Rockit‘, but he regularly revisited the jazz tradition, often through ventures dedicated to his mentor Miles Davis. He has continued to spring surprises, with 2007s River: The Joni Letters (for Joni Mitchell) and 2010s globetrotting The Imagine Project, with collaborators as different as Chaka Khan and the Chieftains. For this unique solo performance, splicing acoustic, electric, and computer-generated music, Hancock joins new material and many of his best-loved themes.

JF

There will be no interval in this concert

12Monday November

14

londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Sunday 11 November

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REtURNS

Festival Picks

RORY DUFFY Young & Serious Member

Jan Garbarek GroupWith Trilok Gurtu

tue 13 Royal Festival HallI love the haunting, spiritual

nature of his music, it takes my mind places!

Esperanza Spalding thu 15 Royal Festival Hall

I love the oozing creativity, sponteneity and quirkiness of

this artist

Chick Corea/Christian McBride/Brian Blade

Sat 17 BarbicanI’m excited to see these three

legends of jazz onstage together

Festival Picks

SEBASTIAN SCOTNEYlondon Jazz Blog

Let Spin and Alice Zawadzkithu 15 green Note

Two fascinating bands in one of London’s best little music rooms

30 Years of The Mike Westbrook Trio Sat 10 Kings place

An anniversary launch gig featuring the UK’s most

unfailingly original composer

Karin Krog & Bengt Hallbergthu 15 – Fri 16 the Forge

The whole world deserves to experience the glorious warmth

of Karin Krog’s low E

Herbie Hancock

13

BIll FRISEllTHE GREAT FLOOD7.30pm Southbank Centre/Queen Elizabeth Hall

Bill Frisell guitar / Ron Miles, trumpet /

Tony Scherr bass / Kenny Wollesen drums

Film by Bill Morrison

Bill Frisell’s transformation of the guitar has been one of the idiosyncratic wonders of contemporary music – an instantly-recognisable confection of bluegrass harmonies, uniquely-voiced pedal-assisted chords that resemble the sound of a wind instrument, noise-rock, and jazz improvisations that link back to his early-‘70s lessons with the legendary Jim Hall. Over four decades, Frisell has worked with composer Mike gibbs, saxophonists Jan garbarek and Joe lovano, drummer paul Motian and new-music firebrand John Zorn. a tireless juggler of line-ups and formats, he has formed bands with keyboardist/composer Wayne Horvitz, cellist Hank Roberts, and with the electric-viola innovator Eyvind Kang. But Frisell has also long  been an original creator of unusual solo projects – like his music to accompany the images of 1940s rural photographer Mike Disfarmer, his Tales From The Far Side soundtrack for comic artist gary larson, and this third collaboration

with film-maker Bill Morrison for The Great Flood. this 85-minute work for full-length film and Frisell’s quartet, deals with the most destructive river flood in american history, the 1927 Mississippi disaster. It ruined lives, but also triggered long-term cultural change – including the mass migration of sharecroppers that brought rural southlands music to the northern cities, and is regarded by many as a factor in the development of Chicago blues, R&B, and ultimately rock and roll. Bill Morrison is an award-winning experimental director who has often worked with exploratory musicians – including composers John adams and Steve Reich – and his haunting use of unrestored archive film, and Frisell’s typically observant, tender, and poignant responses, make for a unique experience. 

JF

There will be no interval in this concert

pSYlUS FREE

6pmSouthbank Centre/the Front Room

Psylus / David Turay saxophones /

James Benzies bass / Zuri Jarrett-Boswell

piano, synth / Chibike Odukwe drums /

D’vo (Tile Gichigi-Lipere) electronics

psylus is the melding of five progressive minds that together create realms of sound transcendent of genre. a dynamic exploration of textures and styles; psylus finds its foundations from each members’ respective roots in jazz, hip-hop and electronic music, which serve as a platform for abstraction and musical evolution. Having settled into the current line up in January of this year, psylus work to create music that breaks new ground, whilst remaining a music true to their own passions.

Produced by Young & Serious

JaZZ IN tHE NEW FREE

EUROpE: talK

THE WORD pART I 6pmSouthbank Centre/Sunley pavilion

Chair Tony Whyton / Panel members Karin

Krog / Francesco Martinelli

In the first of two public discussions, an international panel of leading writers, critics and artists dig into the story of how jazz in Europe has created its own identity from the inspirations of the african-american tradition, over the past half century.

JaN gaRBaREK gROUpWITH TRILOK GURTU 7.30pmSouthbank Centre/Royal Festival Hall

Jan Garbarek saxophone / Trilok Gurtu

percussion / Rainer Bruninghaus piano /

Yuri Daniel bass

the Norwegian saxophonist Jan garbarek and the Mumbai-born percussionist trilok gurtu grew up in contrasting climates in almost every respect. But a sea-change in jazz begun in the 1970s – when an earlier trickle of world-music crossovers made possible by improvisation, and by isolated pioneers like saxophonist Yusef lateef, became a flood – eventually brought these two very different musicians together. Jan garbarek had discovered jazz through hearing John Coltrane on the radio in his teens. through revealing experiences with expatriate american composer george Russell in the late ‘60s, and in partnering Oslo vocalist Karin Krog, he came to the fledgling german independent ECM Records in 1970, and his projects for the company embraced folk music, free-jazz, a legendary quartet with Keith Jarrett, and in the ‘90s gregorian chants with the Hilliard Ensemble vocal group. garbarek’s famous tone still suggests the fervently poignant sounds of Coltrane and albert ayler, but it is also steeped in the folk-music and silent landscapes of his homeland.

trilok gurtu, the son of Indian vocalist Shobha gurtu, studied classical tabla, but also played western kit-drums from the 1970s, and performed in groups featuring eclectic Ornette Coleman trumpeter Don Cherry, guitarists John Mclaughlin, pat Metheny, Ralph towner and larry Coryell, and Weather Report founder Joe Zawinul. gurtu can evoke the sounds of the most dynamic jazz and rock drummers, layer those grooves with the intricacies of raga-rhythms, or juxtapose the sounds of birds, trains, rainstorms, and religious incantations. His relationship with Jan garbarek, veering from the quietly lyrical to the ecstatic, has proved to be one of the most popular and productive of his long career.

JF

There will be no interval in this concert

tuesday November

15londonjazzfestival.org.uk

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aUStRalIaN aRt ORCHEStRaCROSSING ROpER BAR7.45pm Southbank Centre/purcell Room

Australian Art Orchestra / Paul

Grabowsky, Artistic Director of AAO, Co-Musical

Director of Crossing Roper Bar, keys / Tony Hicks

reeds / Philip Rex bass / Carl Dewhurst guitar /

Niko Schäuble drums / Benjamin Wilfred vocals,

bilma (clapsticks) / Daniel Wilfred vocals, bilma

(clapsticks) / David Wilfred yidäki (didjeridu)

the australian art Orchestra has been in operation since 1994, when founder paul grabowsky set out to create a national ensemble of improvising musicians. Recognised as australia’s pre-eminent jazz pianist, grabowsky is also regarded as one of australia’s foremost film composers. Each member of the aaO has garnered their own musical careers, experiences of which, they bring with them to aaO to enrich

its sound. the driving idea behind the orchestra is that music is a language, which establishes and builds connections between people, whether as individuals or as societies and cultures. the musicians draw on diverse approaches to music making, with individual expression, as well as a high level of ensemble playing to make these connections a reality. this is particularly evident in the ‘Crossing Roper Bar’ collaboration, with the Young Wagilak group of arnhem land, which connects the orchestra with the traditions of australia’s indigenous people. Fusing the orchestra’s sounds with the traditional song cycles of aboriginal australia.

RH

There will be a 30 min Q&A to open the show

hosted by Kevin Le Gendre followed by an

interval

Bill Frisell by Michael Wilson

psylus

SHaBaKa HUtCHINgS & tHE BBC CONCERt ORCHEStRa7.30pm Southbank Centre/Queen Elizabeth Hall

Shabaka Hutchings, mulit-reedist, composer and BBC Radio 3 New generation artist, is one of the leading young musicians on the current london scene. For this special concert, Shabaka takes his sound-world to another level with a brand new commission from BBC Radio 3. this world premiere features the BBC Concert Orchestra, Sons of Kemet, beatboxer Jason Singh, and sonic trailblazer leafcutter John for a new union between jazz, minimalist classical music and electronica.

The BBC Concert Orchestra have produced a

separate programme, so please see this for

further details about this concert.

RH

This event will be broadcast on live on Radio 3 from 7.30pm. bbc.co.uk/radio3

CaRMINHO7.45pm Southbank Centre/purcell Room

Carminho vocals / Luis Guerreiro Portuguese

guitar / Diogo Clemente guitar / Marino de Freitas

bass guitar

Carminho, or Carmo Rebelo de andrade, is the newest and most talked about purveyor of portuguese song. Fado, meaning destiny or fate, explores themes of love, loss and longing. Carminho took influence from her fado singing mother, teresa Siqueira, and felt compelled to perform within the genre. Her first studio album, Fado was hugely successful the world over and Songlines named it their best album of 2011. Her latest album, Alma (meaning soul),

sees her exploring the fado genre further, manipulating it to form something new – she takes traditional fado tunes and writes new lyrics for them. Carminho proved she was a strong fado interpreter, and now shows she is also capable of respectfully creating something distinctly her own out of that traditional form. She constantly challenges herself and in the process makes extremely mesmerising and engaging music.

RH

There will be one of interval of 20 mins

Carminho plays Manchester and Leeds this week

and returns in January to the Celtic Connections

Festival in Glasgow to work with Gaelic singers

This event will be broadcast in World Routes on Sun 18 Nov. bbc.co.uk/radio316

londonjazzfestival.org.uk

tuesday 13 November

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Festival Picks

CHRIS GARRICKartist

James Pearson & Tom Cawley ‘A Musical Portrait Of

Oscar Peterson’thu 15 Chappell of Bond St

Two of the world’s finest pianists lock horns in a sensational duo

Jack DeJohnetteFri 16 Queen Elizabeth Hall

A drumming legend gave ussuch a memorable masterclass

back in ‘93 at the Royal Academy of Music

Jim Hall Trio + Kenny Wheeler Big Band

Sun 18 Queen Elizabeth HallAn unmissable chance to see the guitar thaumaturge himself, Jim Hall, and the equally momentous

Kenny Wheeler

Carminho by Isabel pinto

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YOUR SMARTPHONE

HEAR ME TALKIN’ TO YA FREE

KURt EllINg talK

& SHEIla JORDaN6pm Southbank Centre/the Front Room

Kurt Elling and Sheila Jordan talk about their lives and careers in advance of this evening’s concert and answer questions from the audience.

This event will be broadcast in Jazz Line-Up on Sun 6 Jan 2013. bbc.co.uk/radio3

DpZ QUINtEt FREE

6pm Barbican Freestage

Thomas De Pourquery saxophone / Daniel

Zimmermann trombone / Maxime Delpierre

electric guitar / Sylvain Daniel electric bass / David

Aknin drums

Fantastic live performer thomas de pourquery, brings his acclaimed DpZ Quintet to the UK for the first time. the vocalist and saxophonist leads the five-piece which also features trombonist Daniel Zimmermann, with whom De pourquery has been playing for more than fifteen years. When they first came together the musicians

played hard bop, gradually evolving their sound into a more creative electronic vibe. DpZ’s first album, He’s Looking at you Kid was awarded ‘Choc des chocs’ in 2009 by Jazzmagazine and now, DpZ bring their jazz, Stravinsky and English prog rock inflected music to london for their UK debut.

RH

JaZZ RECORD FREE

REQUEStS pRESENTED BY ALYN SHIpTON6pm Kings place/St pancras Room

alyn Shipton presents a special live edition of the legendary show Jazz Record Requests. there’ll be surprise guests and a chance for you to make your request in person and live on the radio.

tickets will be issued on a first-come-first-served basis: just turn up on the day.Email jazz.record.requests@bbc.co.uk to make a request on the show.

This event will be broadcast in Jazz Record Requests on Sat 17 Nov. bbc.co.uk/radio3

BRaD MEHlDaU tRIO

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7.30pmBarbican

Brad Mehldau piano / Larry Grenadier

bass / Jeff Ballard drums

Brad Mehldau’s childhood piano lessons introduced him to the classical composers’ patient art – Brahms, Schubert and Schumann were early favourites – of imaginative long-range variation on brief motifs, and the approach stayed with him as a jazz improviser. In his teens in the 1980s, Mehldau was drawn to jazz pianists from Oscar peterson to Keith Jarrett, but also to Emerson, lake and palmer, Weather Report, and Miles Davis’s fusion bands. pop grooves, swing, classical symmetries and an ability to improvise with a composer’s foresight, thus coexist in him with a rare cordiality. He was taught at the Berklee School of Music and then the New School For Social Research in Manhattan (where his tutors included pianists Kenny Werner and Fred Hersch), then worked with veteran Kind of Blue drummer Jimmy Cobb and young saxophone star Joshua Redman, but made his international name from 1997 with

the Art of the Trio album series, embracing jazz classics, originals and long, ingeniously- mutating improvisations on songs by Radiohead, Nick Drake or the Beatles. Mehldau has since performed with classical soprano Renee Fleming, with eclectic producer Jon Brion, and in many other cross-genre partnerships – but the trio, in which former Chick Corea drummer Jeff Ballard joined long-time Mehldau bassist larry grenadier in 2005, seems to get closest to his heartbeat. It released two albums on Nonesuch this year with Ode, a showcase for original themes and Where Do You Start featuring covers of Sonny Rollins’ ‘airegin’, the Jimi Hendrix classic ‘Hey Joe’ and songs by Elvis Costello, Nick Drake, Sufjan Stevens and more.

JF

There will be no interval in this concert

14Wednesday November

KURt EllINg SOlD OUt

QUEUE FORREtURNS

+ SHEIla JORDaN 7.30pmSouthbank Centre/Queen Elizabeth Hall

Kurt Elling vocals / Laurence Hobgood piano

/ John McLean guitar / Clark Sommers bass /

Bryan Carter drums

Sheila Jordan vocals / Brian Kellock piano /

Kenny Ellis bass / Stu Ritchie drums

Few jazz vocalists successfully juggle an improviser’s appeal to jazz fans, with a simpler message for listeners who just want to hear good songs movingly performed. Kurt Elling, the Chicago-raised musician widely hailed as the most complete and technically commanding male jazz vocalist on the planet, has been comfortably traversing those two worlds for years.

Elling’s four-octave swerves through devious John Coltrane themes, or variations on ‘Body and Soul’ via Dexter gordon’s sax interpretation rather than the original tune, are virtuoso displays of the art of vocalese that make insiders cheer. But the Sinatra-like blend of muscle and tenderness with which he might unfold ‘You Don’t Know What love Is’ or ‘My Foolish Heart’ reaches more widely, across generations and cultures. He sang in church choirs as a child (his father was a lutheran pastor), studied divinity at the University of Chicago, but began singing in local clubs in 1989 and eventually made the pursuit full-time. By 1994, Elling was recording for Blue Note with his regular pianist/arranger laurence Hobgood, and a steady flow of albums since that time have seen him transform standard songs, or jazz themes by Wayne Shorter or Duke Ellington, shed a jazz light on poems by Rainer Maria Rilke or theodore Roethke, and bring his own kind of incisive intelligence and dramatic authority to pop originals by King Crimson, Earth Wind and Fire, or the Beatles. Elling’s latest Concord album, 1619 Broadway – the Brill Building Project, celebrates the songwriter tenants of the legendary Manhattan building that at various times housed Burt Bacharach, paul Simon, lieber & Stoller and Carole King.

For an artist who has sometimes seemed to be inhabiting a private world in which she’s singing quietly and blissfully to herself, Sheila Jordan has reached a fascinated worldwide audience over the five decades since her recording debut. Jordan’s melodic conception comes from bebop and (like Kurt Elling) she was a fluent exponent of vocalese from her early years – but she cherishes lyrics, never sings a cliche, and imparts new meanings to familiar songs by the most delicate tweaks to tonality or vibrato, or by startling diversions of pitch. When Jordan scats it’s often in a quietly whooping, trance-like murmur in her favourite middle register – with her eyes closed, and the microphone clutched close. She grew up in Detroit as Sheila Jeanette Dawson, and was singing in the city’s clubs by her early teens. In the vocal trio Skeeter, Mitch and Jean she performed vocalese adaptations of Charlie parker solos, moved to New York in the early 1950s, married bebop pianist Duke Jordan and studied with Cool School piano guru lennie tristano, and in 1962 made a stunning recording debut for Blue Note with Portrait of Sheila. Jordan worked with composer george Russell, sang in venues from nightclubs to churches, performed jazz arrangements of Robert Creeley’s poetry, and over the years she has had productive musical partnerships with bassist Harvie Swartz and Cameron Brown (in the ‘80s and ‘90s respectively), and with former John Coltrane pianist Steve Kuhn.

JF

This event will be broadcast in Jazz Line-Up on Sun 6 Jan 2013. bbc.co.uk/radio3

SaRaH JaNE MORRISCELLO SONGS

7.45pmSouthbank Centre/purcell Room

Sarah Jane Morris vocals / Enrico

Melozzi solo, cello, conductor, arranger /

Michael Rosen saxophone / Loz Speyer

Trumpet, Flugel / Tony Remy guitar / Henry

Thomas acoustic bass / The Celestial

Quartet (Olivia Powis, Agnieszka

Teodorowska, Louisa Danmeri, Melinda

Miguel Andres) and Jenny Adejayan cello

Fallen Angel Gospel Choir / Gill

Manly, Sarah Gillespie, Otis Coulter,

Laura Sykes, Beverley Hills, Adaesi

Ukairo-Morris, Juliet Sharman

Matthews, Sarah Moule, Emma Divine

and surprise guests

Sarah Jane Morris’s soul-steeped four-octave voice and emotional power have inspired comparisons with the best of the best – including Nina Simone, Janis Joplin and Sarah Vaughan – but she is always uniquely recognisable from the

first few bars of a song. In the early 80s she was lead singer with radical bands the Republic, the Happy End and test Department and with the Happy End co-wrote the Miners’ Strike anthem ‘Coal Not Dole’ with Kay Sutcliffe for the Miners Strike! But her breakthrough came in 1986 when she partnered Jimmy Somerville’s haunting falsetto on the Communards’ disco hit ‘Don’t leave Me this Way’. What appeared to be a BBC ban on her version of ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ (for what the corporation perceived as lesbian implications) reversed that rapid progress at the end of the decade, promoters grew nervous of the outspoken Morris, and through the 1990s her evocative artistry was largely neglected in her homeland, though she retained a loyal following in Europe, and particularly Italy where she performs more than 20 concerts a year in amphitheatres and opera houses.

after the millennium, however, Sarah Jane Morris’s career took an upswing. a raft of new releases included the retrospectives I Am A Woman and After All These Years, the stormy and experimental Fallen Angel, a subtle and bluesily intimate exchange with tom Waits’ guitarist Marc Ribot, and the poetic Migratory Birds. Her 2009 release of self penned songs Where It Hurts was probably her best work to date. Her new partnership is with Italian cellist and composer/arranger Enrico Melozzi. this concert is the london launch of their collaboration Cello Songs, a new collection (featuring no less than 14 cellos and Dominic Miller on nylon string guitar) of movingly autobiographical originals, and insights into the work of songwriters including Debussy, Ennio Morricone, tom Waits, Damien Rice, tracy Chapman and Boy george.

JF

There will be an interval of 20 minsSpecial thanks to the following supporters: Tim Freeman, Guy Dartnell, Thomas Kibling, Laura Sykes, Jo King, Cynthia and Jon Beresford, Jean Boyce, Gilad Atzmon, Sarah Gillespie, Reg and Melissa Simmonds, Simon Wallace Jones, Jacqueline and Guy Mauduit, Don Boyd, Ruth and John Elliott, Nanette Greenblatt, Eleonore Pironneau, Tim O’Brien, Roberto Campora, Charles Neale, Guy Barker, Maureen Baker, John Schwiller, Derek and Margaret Jewell

HENRI tEXIER 8pm Kings place/Hall One

Henri Texier bass / Sebastian Texier,

saxophones, clarinet / Louis Moutin drums /

David Kweksilber reeds / Julian Arguelles

saxophone / Alain Vankenhove trumpet / Oene

Van Geel viola / Benjamin Flament vibes

Influential 1960s bassist Henri texier has played with some of the giants of jazz, including Bud powell, Dexter gordon and Chet Baker. He is regarded as a kind of European jazz statesman. Using this well-earned position, and his benign presence, he has brought together a pan-European band for this specially commissioned gig. His hugely inventive experimental approach and his open-mindedness have aided him in forming this new group, comprising of musicians he has worked with before and others whom he is working with for the first time. texier is renowned for cultivating his own captivating blend of jazz and ethnic musics that has become one of the defining features of European jazz and has inspired a generation of new musicians. Hugely popular in France for garnering a distinctly ‘French jazz sound’, he was made a Chevalier of the l’Ordre National de la légion d’Honneur, the highest honour the French government gives to its artists. the first set of this enthralling gig comes from texier’s trio, while the second sees the premiere of this specially commissioned trans-national band who prove there are no boundaries – generational or geographical – when it comes to creating high-class music.

RH

There will be an interval of 20 mins

This event will be broadcast in Jazz on 3 on Mon 10 Dec. bbc.co.uk/radio3

18

londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Wednesday 14 November

Festival Picks

CHRIS POTTERartist

Jan Garbarek With Trilok Gurtu

tue 13 Royal Festival HallAmazing diamond-polished

saxophone sound, and Trilok Gurtu is superbad

Charles Mcphersonthu 15–Sat 17 pizzaExpress

Jazz Club Great bebop alto player, soulful,

the real deal

Paco De LuciaFri 16 Royal Festival Hall

The true master of flamenco guitar. Playing at the same time as Sonny Rollins though, tough

choice!

Kurt Elling by Anna W

ebber

SaM lEaK FREE

AQUARIUM6pm Southbank Centre/the Front Room

Sam Leak piano / James Allsopp saxophone

/ Calum Gorlay double bass / Joshua Blackmore

drums

Young pianist Sam leak has played with musicians such as Jay phelps and anita Wardell and has guested with Stan Sulzmann, gareth lockrane and Martin Speake. Now, he leads his own project, whose debut album was recorded in 2009 and released to high praise was featured as one of the top ten international jazz albums in MOJO Magazine.

RH

ESpERaNZa SpalDINgRADIO MUSIC SOCIETY7.30pmSouthbank Centre/Royal Festival Hall

Esperanza Spalding double bass, lead vocals

/ Jeff Galindo, Corey King trombones / Igmar

Thomas, Leala Vogt trumpets / Renato Caranto,

Hailey Niswanger, Brian Landrus saxophones /

Leo Genovese piano, keys / Jef Lee guitar / Lyndon

Rochelle drums / Chris Turner backing vocals

Bassist and vocalist Esperanza Spalding made international headlines when she beat pop-star Justin Bieber at the 2011 grammys to win Best New artist, becoming the first ever jazz musician to win the award. She was the youngest teacher to work at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, has sold out major concert halls worldwide and has performed with some of jazz’s great luminaries, including being a regular player in Joe lovano’s renowned US Five band. She has become a welcome ambassador for jazz, through her achievements, among which she numbers performing at a Nobel peace prize Ceremony in front of Barack Obama as one of her proudest. Spalding brought her Chamber Music Society album to the festival a couple of years ago, and now brings companion album Radio Music Society, with more of a focus on electronic music making. With RMS Spalding displays how she can cleverly bestride tricky genre boundaries between jazz, R&B, soul and pop, to make for highly skilled authentic music, that reaches a wide audience.

RH

There will be no interval in this concert

WOODKID7.30pmSouthbank Centre/Queen Elizabeth Hall

Yoann Lemoine lead vocal / Aron Ottignon

keyboards / Clément Bazin laptop/AD / Thibaut

Mortegoute trombone / Nicolas Heumber trumpet

/ Joël Lasry french Horn / Thomas Dupuis

percussion / Olivier Leclère percussion

French music-video director Woodkid aka Yoann lemoine is best known for creating iconic videos for Katy perry, Rihanna and lana Del Ray. Now he is forging himself a new career making music as well as films. He was inspired after being given a banjo by the great american guitarist Richie Havens, during a video shoot and earlier this year released the Iron Ep, a dreamy and moody collection of four original songs written on guitar and piano, that feature lemoine singing in both French and English. lemoine treats each aspect of his Woodkid alter ego equally. the video for Iron, was directed by Woodkid himself and starred British model agyness Deyn. He began 2012 by performing a show from the Eiffel tower that was broadcast worldwide. His debut album, The Golden Age, is out soon.

RH

There will be no interval in this concert

19londonjazzfestival.org.uk

15thursday November SOlD OUtQUEUE FOR

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Festival Picks

MIKE FLYNNJazzwise

Chick Corea/Christian McBride/Brian Blade

Sat 17 Barbican Jazz piano icon plus F1 rhythm

section: unmissable gig

Kairos 4Tet With Omar Sat 17 Kings place

Luminous sax melodies and sensuous vocals collide in style

Macy Gray With David Murray Big Band

Sun 18 BarbicanExplosive swing grooves and avant-soul blues holllerswhy

Fusion was king

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Woodkid by Mathieu Cesar (top) Esperanza Spalding by Carlos pericas

Sam leak

Over the last few Festivals, Emile Holba has hot footed it from venue to venue, armed with a camera, capturing the very essence of the Festival’s vibrancy and showing you the best bits. Here are a selection of highlights from last years LJF

for your viewing pleasure. emileholba.co.uk

20

londonjazzfestival.org.uk (Top left to bottom) ayanna, lucinda Belle, gregory porter

(Top right to bottom) Ian Shaw & guy Barker, Jazz Voice, Shingai Shoniwa, De Jongens Driests – arno Bakker, Oren Marshall

21londonjazzfestival.org.uk

(Top left to bottom) Ben l’Oncle Soul, alison Krauss & Union Station, Ornette Coleman, Stefano Bollani & Martial Solal, Nik Bärtsch, Emilia Mårtensson

(Top right to bottom) abram Wilson, gwilym Simcock, Soul Rebels Brass Band, Vladimir tarasov

16

FlaVIa COElHO+ aNDREYa tRIaNa7.45pm Southbank Centre/purcell Room

Flavia Coelho vocals, guitar / Sébastien

Lunghi guitar / Victor-Attila Vagh-Veinmann

keys / Paul Alex Chonville drums

Andreya Triana lead vocals / Nathaniel

Keen guitar / John Wells bass / Aram Zarikian

drums

Brazilian vocalist Flavia Coelho brings her Brazilian heritage and European exposure to create a rich and exciting performance for her UK debut. She moved to paris from Brazil in 2006, which proved to be a turning point in her career, as it was there that she met Bika Bika pierre, a musician from Cameroon. pierre introduced Flavia to african music and encouraged her to play the guitar and work with fellow musician and producer Victor Vagh. Her debut album, Bossa Muffin (out now via Harmonia Mundi), combines the many influences in her rich musical background. the title, ‘Bossa Muffin’ refers to the album’s mixture of samba, bossa nova, reggae, ragamuffin, african beats and Catalan rumba. It seamlessly blends together the combination of these traditional and contemporary musics to create a cohesive whole that defies any easy genre categorisation. Flavia describes the album as a “traveller’s diary” and indeed her experiences of her extensive travels shine through the multifaceted music. Her distinctive brand of ‘Brazilian music in response to Europe’ makes for a captivating and entrancing listening experience.

an experimental and self-taught singer and songwriter originally hailing from South East london, andreya triana grew up in a multicultural environment. a talented vocalist, andreya began singing aged seven, taking influence from the sights and sounds of inner-city london. When she was 17 she began performing at open-mic nights where she met the music collective Bootis who influenced her subsequent musical career. In 2010 she released her debut album Lost Where I Belong, produced by Bonobo.

RH

HENRY aRMBURg FREE

JENNINgS 1pmSouthbank Centre/the Clore Ballroom

Henry Armburg Jennings trumpet / Gabriel

Latchin piano / Adam King double bass

Henry armburg Jennings took up the trumpet and piano at the age of five, and had made his standards-packed debut jazz album, Out of the Starting Blocks, only twelve years later. One of the talented alumni of Britain’s National Youth Jazz Orchestra, armburg Jennings is an impassioned jazz enthusiast with a deep affection for the punchy hard-bop style of the 1950s – particularly as exemplified by the Jazztet, led by saxophonist Benny golson and trumpeter art Farmer. golson compositions like the famous ‘Killer Joe’, and Farmer’s cool trumpet lyricism, have been powerful inspirations for armburg Jennings, and his ‘Jazztet Re-imagined’ project creatively reworks this classic material and some of its original arrangements.

JF

SID pEaCOCK FREE

SURgE6pmBarbican Freestage

Sid Peacock band leader, vocals / Max

Gitting flutes & whistles / Lluis Mather, Huw

Morgan,Chris Morgan, Nick Rundle saxophones

/ Mike Adlington, Aaron Diaz trumpet, FX / Rob

Anstey trombone / Alcyona Mick piano / Simon

King guitar / Ruth Angell, Kiki Chen violins / Ryan

Trebilcock bass / John Randall drums / Jason

Huxtable marimba / Steve Tchoumba african

percussion

When respected critics invoke memories of the UK’s genre-bending 1980s orchestra loose tubes to describe the sound of a new young big band, audiences take notice. Sid peacock, the Birmingham-based composer from Northern Ireland, has not only had the music of his ebullient 16-piece Surge ensemble compared with the tubes, but also with the work of Frank Zappa, Carla Bley, and Django Bates. peacock was a rockabilly guitarist in his teens, but taught himself music theory whilst working in a library and studied music at colleges in Northern Ireland, winding up at Birmingham Converatoire, where Surge was launched. the band was included in the Cheltenham Jazz Festival’s Jerwood Rising Stars scheme, it has received numerous commissions and played many festivals, and its debut disc Live In Birmingham ‘04 topped Jazzwise magazine’s album chart in august of the following year. Recent additions to the band’s repertoire have come from Sid peacock’s period as a composer in residence at the Irish Cultural Centre in paris.

JF

Thanks to support from Jazzlines

HEAR ME TALKIN TO YA FREE

JaCK DeJOHNEttE talK

6pmSouthbank Centre/the Front Room

One of the finest jazz drummers of all time, Jack DeJohnette talks about his life and career in advance of this evening’s concert and answers questions from the audience.

This event will be broadcast in Jazz On 3 on Mon 19 Nov. bbc.co.uk/radio3

Friday November

22

londonjazzfestival.org.uk

thursday 15 November

MaRCUS ROBERtS RESIDENCYKings place

Marcus Roberts piano / Rodney Jordan

bass / Jason Marsalis drums / special guest

Etienne Charles trumpet / with Guildhall

School of Music & Drama Jazz Band

When he took over the piano chair in Wynton Marsalis’ band in 1985, at just 21, Florida-born pianist Marcus Roberts showed the jazz world he was a youthful old soul who linked a big technique to a profound respect for jazz history. Roberts’ subsequent original work is peppered with the stomping stride-piano style of early jazz, the legacies of Duke Ellington and thelonious Monk, the orchestral approach of george gershwin, and much more. Church-music made a major impact on him in childhood, and after losing his sight to cataracts at five years old, he taught himself piano, and went on to study classical music at Florida State University (where he still teaches), before touring with Marsalis for six years. He won the first thelonious Monk International piano Competition in 1987, and premiered his composition ‘Romance, Swing and the Blues’ with the Marsalis-led lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra on his 30th birthday.

Since then he has composed small-band and symphonic works, and played everything from unaccompanied jazz to piano concertos. With his own trio (Rodney Jordan on bass and Jason Marsalis on drums), and members of the guildhall School of Music and Drama’s powerful student jazz band, following a series of intensive rehearsals at the conservatoire, Marcus Roberts sweeps through jazz history in this three-day residency at Kings place. He pays tribute to two of the greatest jazz creators with ‘Celebrating Monk and trane’ (15 Nov), plays standard songs and originals on ‘genius of Modern piano’ (16 Nov), outlines the very different keyboard legacies of Jelly Roll Morton, Earl Hines and Bud powell ‘New Orleans Meets Harlem’ (17 Nov) and presents his own big band music, and that of Count Basie and Duke Ellington as a rousing finale on ‘Romance, Swing and the Blues’ (17 Nov).

JF

CElEBRatINg MONK & tRaNE IN tHE JaZZ tRIOthu 15 Nov, 8pm

MaRCUS ROBERtS – tHE gENIUS OF MODERN pIaNOFri 16 Nov, 8pm

NEW ORlEaNS MEEtS HaRlEMSat 17 Nov, 3pm

ROMaNCE, SWINg aND tHE BlUESSat 17 Nov, 8pm

Festival Picks

GABI TARTAKOVSKY Write Stuff participant 2011

Patti Austin Sat 10 Ronnie Scott’s

Slick, romantic, standing tall as the classiest lady in Jazz

Natalie DuncanWed 14 Royal albert Hall/

Elgar RoomBluesy vocals, yearning tunes

confirm she’s wiser beyondher years

Lonnie Liston SmithFri 16 Hideaway

Keyboard legend’s wild trip proves why Fusion was king

Henry armburg Jennings by Chris Jennings

Flavia Coelho

aDRIaNO FREE

aDEWalE6pmSouthbank Centre/the Clore Ballroom

Adriano Adewale percussion, vocals /

Antonio Forcione acoustic guitar / Matheus

Nova acoustic bass

Brazilian-born, london-based, adriano adewale is a fine percussionist. His music holds a rich chemistry of cultural influences, rooted in the musical traditions of Nigeria, angola and Brazil but infused with contemporary European classical and jazz styles. adewale’s compositions fuse global influences, infectiously funky rhythms and intimate soulful ballads.

RH

paCO DE lUCIa SOlD OUtQUEUE FOR

REtURNS7.30pm Southbank Centre/Royal Festival Hall

Paco de Lucia guitar / Antonio Sanchez

guitar / Antonio Serrano keys / Alain Perez bass /

Piraña percussion / David de Jacoba vocals

Farruco dance

paco De lucia is regarded as the world’s leading exponent of flamenco guitar. Born into a musical family in algeciras, in southern Spain, he takes the spirit of flamenco and controls it, manipulating it so that its power is palpable and raw. His virtuosity and innate understanding of the genre and of his instrument has helped establish flamenco and the guitar as concert-hall worthy. paco de lucia has always pushed at the boundaries of flamenco and most notably, collaborated with pianist Chick Corea and fellow guitarist John Mclaughlin. He has since recorded albums marking returns to the pure artform as well as exploring new territories between flamenco and other genres. He is a singular talent, whose dedication and skill is unmatched, his supreme expression of the artform is awe-inspiring live; the energy and passion of his musicianship, breath-taking.

RH

There will be no interval in this concert

SONNY ROllINS SOlD OUtQUEUE FOR

REtURNS7.30pmBarbican

Sonny Rollins tenor saxophone; Clifton

Anderson trombone / Saul Rubin guitar / Bob

Cranshaw bass / Sammy Figueroa percussion /

Kobie Watkins drums

Jazz is too diverse for any single performer to represent the quintessence of its virtues, but Sonny Rollins comes close. Not because the now 82 year-old master saxophonist likes old Broadway songs, or because he swings, or plays the blues. But because he can still spin the flimsiest of show-tunes into improvised tenor-sax concertos that run for 20 minutes or more, or haul quotes from the encyclopaedia of songs in his head into any and every place in a solo where they might suddenly seem to fit – the jazz qualities that the late New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett called ‘the sound of surprise’. theodore Walter Rollins was born on 7 September, 1930, in New York, admired tenor-sax pioneer Coleman Hawkins and bebop genius Charlie parker, and was guided in the subtleties of jazz harmony by his piano-playing neighbourhood friend thelonious Monk. He played with Miles Davis, and with the classic Clifford Brown-Max Roach hard-bop quintet, but it was the series of astonishing albums from 1956 onward that included Saxophone Colossus and Way Out West that suggested the newcomer’s imagination and technique were comparable to parker’s. In later years, interrupted by extended sabbaticals for research (including the outdoor practice sessions under New York’s Williamsburg Bridge that have gone down in jazz folklore), Rollins explored free-jazz, fusion and calypso songs inspired by his parents’ Virgin Islands origins. In recent years, the tireless improvising colossus has built his marathon shows around barnstorming calypsos, rugged ballads, tributes to Duke Ellington, and his own brand of inimitably swinging bop-blues.

JF

There will be no interval in this concert

JaCK DeJOHNEttE gROUp7.30pmSouthbank Centre/Queen Elizabeth Hall

Jack DeJohnette drums / Don Byron reeds /

Marvin Sewell guitar / George Colligan keyboard /

Jerome Harris bass

the intelligent firepower of the great american drummer Jack DeJohnette has linked him to some of the most celebrated bandleaders in jazz history – including thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Charles lloyd, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. DeJohnette has also been a cornerstone of star pianist Keith Jarrett’s Standards trio alongside bassist gary peacock for almost 30 years. He was classically trained in Chicago (he’s a gifted pianist too), but became a first-call drummer from the beginning of the 1960s. DeJohnette’s uniquely creative kind of ferocity in groove-heavy settings brought him to Charles lloyd’s popular crossover quartet in 1966 and to Miles Davis’ early electric bands from 1969–71, but his ear for fine detail also allowed him to flourish in intimate relationships with pianists Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, with British saxophonist and composer John Surman, and many more. He wrote for and led unique crossover bands with unusual instrumentations in the 1970s and ‘80s, and explored african and Native american influences from a highly personal world-music perspective subsequently. In the past decade, DeJohnette has composed and played music for meditation, founded his ‘latin project’ with clarinettist Don Byron, a quartet including Wayne Shorter’s partners Danilo perez and John patitucci, and the avant-fusion group Beyond trio, dedicated to the late tony Williams. DeJohnette has also worked with kora master Foday Musa Suso, and formed this latest group that performs tonight – the newest venture for one of the most broadminded and diversely talented artists on the jazz circuit today.

JFFollowing his LJF performance, Jack DeJohnette plays Birmingham and Gateshead as he brings his UK tour to a close. This tour has received support from Arts Council England

This event will be broadcast in Jazz On 3 on Mon 19 Nov. bbc.co.uk/radio3

23londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Sonny Rollins by John Abbott

Jack DeJohnette

OpEN SOUlS + CIRClE OF SOUND7.45pm Southbank Centre/purcell Room

Open Souls / Ranjana Ghatak vocals / Jason

Singh beatboxer, sound artist / Seb Rochford drums

Circle of Sound / Soumik Datta sarod /

Bernhard Schimpelsberge percussion

Open Souls is a new trio project in which Indian vocalist Ranjana ghatak lines up with beatboxer and sound artist Jason Singh and drummer Seb Rochford. the trio use Indian classical compositions and contemporary music as a basis to create driving, improvised rhythms. Beatboxer and vocal sculptor Jason Singh’s work is rooted in inspiring people to engage in exciting creative experiences through the voice, technology, performance and participation. His creative explorations constantly find him moving through music, live performance, sound art, dance, film, theatre, science, education and research. Seb Rochford is the extraordinarily imaginative and adventurous composer, songwriter, producer and drummer whose open-minded attitude to collaborations of all genres has firmly established him as a key musician on the current london scene. Ranjana ghatak is a British Indian singer who grew up in the classical vocal world within the canon of Indian tradition. Having met Singh and Rochford she has been inspired to explore new areas of music making and together the three musicians have each had a profound effect on one another’s artistic outputs.

28 year old sarod player and composer Soumik Datta is a protegé of the legendary sarod maestro pandit Buddhadev Das gupta. Datta’s virtuosic technique combined with his flair for contemporary composition makes him a much sought-after collaborator and he has worked with the likes of Beyoncé, Nitin Sawhney, Bill Bailey, akram Khan and talvin Singh. the creator of the first electro-acoustic sarod, Soumik combines guitar riffs with Indian melody, electronica and drum ‘n’ bass to create a distinctly personal hybrid sound-world. For this performance he comes together with British-austrian percussionist Bernhard Schimpelsberge for their project Circle of Sound, which merges zlive music and specially created films as they present a shared journey through Indian and European music.

RH

LIVE TO EUROpE FREE

IaIN BallaMY’S aNORaK + ROBERt MItCHEll’S paNaCEaHOStED BY KEVIN lE gENDRE9.30pmSouthbank Centre/the Clore Ballroom

Iain Ballamy’s Anorak / Iain Ballamy

saxophone / Gareth Williams piano / Steve Watts

double bass / Tim Giles drums

Robert Mitchell’s Panacea / Robert Mitchell

piano, keys / Deborah Jordan vocals / Tom Farmer

bass / Laurie Lowe drums

Saxophonist and composer Iain Ballamy is eclectic, contemporary and unencumbered by formality and tradition. He has formed many musical relationships around the world, most notably in Scandinavia, and was the founding member of loose tubes. He now leads his fine jazz quartet, anorak, which also features renowned drummer Martin France. anorak’s music includes interesting lyrical takes on swing, ballads and reworkings of classic jazz standards.

pianist and composer Robert Mitchell has collaborated with Cuban violinist Omar puente, saxophonist Julian Siegel and vibraphonist Corey Mwamba as well as performing with Courtney pine, Steve Coleman, Norma Winstone, greg Osby and Matana Roberts among others. Since 1999 Mitchell has led his group, panacea (the greek goddess of medicine and cures), through which he expertly displays his authoritative and measured musicianship.

RH

This event will be broadcast in Jazz Line-Up on Sun 2 Dec. bbc.co.uk/radio3

tRISH ClOWES DO WORKSHOp11amSouthbank Centre/level 3 Function Room

Saxophonist/composer trish Clowes leads a workshop in developing melodies for improvisation and writing music, and looks at techniques for creating a strong tone and nimble fingers.

Ages 11–16. Suitable for saxophonists, grade

5+. Bring your own instrument

JEREMY talK MONtEIRO tRIOMASTERCLASSMiddaySouthbank Centre/Spirit level, Blue Room

pianist Jeremy Monteiro and his trio share their tips and techniques. plus they offer a performance critique of a jazz ensemble from one of london’s conservatoires and invite questions from the audience.

NEIl COWlEY tRIOWITH THE GOLDSMITHS (BIG) STRINGS2pmBarbican

Neil Cowley Trio / Neil Cowley piano /

Rex Horan double bass / Evan Jenkins drums

and The Goldsmiths (Big) Strings

Neil Cowley is an exciting British musician with boundless energy and enthusiasm for a challenge. the Neil Cowley trio is renowned as one of the leading jazz trios in the UK. they take inspiration from many genres of music, improvising in the moment in response to the audience, rather than at predefined sections. Recent album, The Face of Mount Molehill, the trio’s fourth release, features a full string section and was met with wide critical acclaim. For this specially commissioned gig, Cowley takes his off-the-cuff approach and expands it for a 30+ piece string orchestra, comprised of goldsmiths, University of london students and seasoned professionals. turning on their head, the way the musicians are used to playing, Cowley has thrown out the sheet music the classically trained musicians are used to relying on; and instead has challenged them to play by ear, encouraging them to learn improvisation and chord theory, altering the way they approach performance. the string orchestra and Cowley’s trio will feel their way through material from the latest album as well as specially composed works. Owing to Cowley’s varied background as a musician, his extraordinary musicality results in a kind of amalgam of pop, jazz, classical and quintessentially British music that he shares here with the large string ensemble for this exciting new musical experiment.

RH

There will be no interval in this concert

This event will be broadcast in Jazz Line-Up on Sun 30 Dec. bbc.co.uk/radio3

Neil Cowley plays a Yamaha CFX Piano

24

londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Saturday November17

Friday 16 November

Festival Picks

ROGER WRIGHTController, BBC Radio 3 and

Director, BBC proms

Shabaka Hutchings & the BBC Concert Orchestratue 13 Queen Elizabeth Hall

I’m looking forward to the new work Radio 3 has commissioned from its current New Generation

Jazz Artist

Kurt Elling + Sheila Jordan Wed 14 Nov Queen Elizabeth HallTwo singers who in their different

ways sum up the best in jazz vocal artistry

John SurmanSun 18 Nov Queen Elizabeth Hall

Great to have been involvedin this commission from John:an endlessly versatile artist

Festival Picks

GEOFFREY SMITHBBC Radio 3 presenter

Robert GlasperFri 9 Royal Festival Hall

The real jazz deal: he makes hip hop swing and say something too

Sonny Rollins Fri 16 Barbican

As Ellington put it, ain’t but the one. A life force all on his own

Gwilym Simcock with City of London SinfoniaFri 16 St James’s piccadilly

A feast of jazz-classical fusion, with Gwilym’s latest originals

and Milhaud’s iconic La Creation du Monde

Neil Cowley trio

MICHaEl gaRRICK: a tRIBUtE3pmSouthbank Centre/purcell Room

Jacqui Dankworth, Jeremy Robson vocals /

Art Themen saxophone / Gabriel Garrick trumpet

/ Barry Green piano / Christian Garrick violin /

Dave Green bass / Matt Ridley bass / Steve Brown

drums / Jim Hart vibraphone

Before the 1960s, jazz musicians in Britain were widely expected to be apostles disseminating an american holy writ – independent jazz ideas spawned in Europe were rare. Michael garrick, the Enfield-born musician who died last year at the age of 78, was one of a new wave of British jazz composers to emerge in the 1950s and ‘60s (the shortlist also included John Dankworth, Stan tracey and Joe Harriott) who galvanised original jazz-making in these islands. garrick was a prolific composer, and a dauntless experimenter with form. He wrote for Ellingtonesque big bands, bebop-driven small groups, symphony orchestras and choirs, for poetry-and-jazz ensembles (literature playing almost as big a part in his life as music) and string quartets. He used the structures and scales of Indian music in his work, was the first to deploy vocalist Norma Winstone’s skills in the ‘instrumental’ ensemble role that became her speciality, and his atmospheric compositions ‘Black Marigolds’ and ‘Dusk Fire’ (for the legendary Don Rendell-Ian Carr group, in which garrick played piano) are among the finest jazz themes ever composed in the UK. Michael garrick’s five-decade legacy is celebrated on this concert by his sons Chris (violin) and gabriel (trumpet), with a specially-formed group including former band-members saxophonist art themen, plus poet Jeremy Robson and prizewinning vibraphonist Jim Hart.

JF

There will be no interval in this concert

tOMMY EVaNS FREE

ORCHEStRa3.30pmBarbican Freestage

Tommy Evans conductor / Ruby Wood,

Anna Stott, Kari Nergaard Bleivik vocals / Ben

Mallinder, Si Kaylor, Rob Mitchell saxophones

/ Simon Beddoe, Matt Roberts trumpets / Nick

Tyson guitar / Dave Kane bass / Jamil Sheriff

piano / Kris Wright drums

leeds College of Music has an enviable reputation for producing skilled jazz graduates with open minds. tabla virtuoso and producer Bupinder Singh Chaggar, and cross-genre composers graham Hearn, Mark Donlon and Matthew Bourne were among tommy Evans’ inspirational teachers at leeds, and the young drummer/composer has collected a raft of citations since graduating – including Jazz Services’ ‘promoters’ Choice’ award in 2008, and the British academy of Songwriters, Composers and authors’ ‘Contemporary Jazz Composition’ award three years later. Evans has been widely acclaimed for his compositional influence on the leeds dubstep septet Submotion Orchestra, for which he also plays drums. But for his new suite ‘the green Seagull’, he has joined elements from jazz, folk, Indian and classical music for performance by a crack 13-piece northern-based band.

JF

JaZZ lINE-Up FREE

WITH STONEpHACE STABBINS, SAM CROWE GROUpHOStED BY ClaIRE MaRtIN4pmSouthbank Centre/the Clore Ballroom

Sam Crowe piano, keys, compositions /

Adam Waldmann saxophone / Will Davies guitar /

Jasper Høiby bass / Dave Hamblett drums

the long partnership between the london Jazz Festival and BBC Radio 3 has played a key role in the lJF’s evolution, and spreading of its message over the years. Radio 3’s ‘Jazz line-Up’, with its popular balance of the established and the innovative has regularly broadcast music and interviews from Festival stars and newcomers alike, and returns this year for the now traditional visits on the event’s two Saturday afternoons.

Hosted by Claire Martin, this edition will feature three performances. Ex-Working Week star larry Stabbins leads his band Stonephace Stabbins through visions of Coltrane in fearsome style, alongside a grooving rhythm

section and vivacious pianist Zoe Rahman. they make an energetic and unusual ensemble. Wrapping up the line-up is pianist and composer Sam Crowe who strives for a modern voice in his compositions reflecting a range of influences as a composer and improviser from Debussy to Keith Jarrett, through to his Bristol roots of Roni Size and Massive attack.

This event will be broadcast in Jazz Line-Up on Sun 18 Nov. bbc.co.uk/radio3

JaZZ IN tHE NEW FREE

EUROpE: talK

THE WORD pART II 4pmSouthbank Centre/the Front Room

Panel members / Jaak Soäär, Nadin Deventer,

Dave Morecroft

this second public discussion takes stock of the current perception of Europe as a melting pot for contemporary jazz, and suggests an informed and imagined path for the future.

Part I on Tue 13 Nov, see p.15

taKE FIVE: FREE

EUROpE lIVE 5.30pmSouthbank Centre/the Front Room

Céline Bonacina saxophone / Maciej Obara

alto saxophone / Fraser Fifield pipes, whistles,

saxophone / Tom Arthurs trumpet, flugelhorn

/ Oene van Geel viola / Bram Stadhouders

guitar / Ole Morten Vågan double bass / Maciej

Garbowski double bass / Benjamin Flament

vibraphone / Gard Nilssen drums

Serious launched the professional development scheme take Five in 2004, in partnership with the Jerwood Charitable Foundation and pRS for Music Foundation, with the aim of providing time and space for emerging composer-performers to develop their craft, collaborate  with like-minded peers and experienced mentors, and acquire some of the career guidance that a performance-based training doesn’t always provide. take Five has gone from strength to strength – nurturing 64 musicians across eight editions – and has also developed other versions of the scheme including a programme incorporating artists from mainland Europe. this london Jazz Festival showcase for take Five: Europe (Edition I) is supported by the Culture programme of the European Union as well as contributions from each partner country, and thus expands the remit of the project to include ten composer-performers from France, the Netherlands, Norway, poland and the UK.

More details can be found attakefiveeurope.com

JUHaNI aaltONEN FREE

QUaRtEt6pmBarbican Freestage

Juhani Aaltonen tenor sax, flute / Iro Haarla

piano / Ulf Krokfors double bass / Reiska Laine

drums

Finnish tenor saxophonist Juhani aaltonen has enjoyed a long and successful career. a staple on the Nordic jazz scene for five decades, aaltonen was deeply inspired by John Coltrane’s legendary concerts in Helsinki in the early 1960s but has long since developed a sound and concept fully his own. With the recently formed Juhani aaltonen Quartet, he has re-connected with musicians, each representing a link to different phases in his career. although his music moves to a new, more reflective level with this quartet, it still always places importance on free improvisation.

RH

StONEpHaCE FREE

StaBBINS6pmSouthbank Centre/the Clore Ballroom

Larry Stabbins saxophone, flute /

Zoe Rahman piano / Karl Rasheed-Abel bass /

Pat Illingworth drums / Crispin ‘Spry’ Robinson

percussion

larry ‘Stonephace’ Stabbins, the Bristol-born saxophonist, has been balancing jazz’s appeal to both the head and the feet for most of his working life. He played with such cutting-edge improvisers such as Keith tippett, Chris Mcgregor, John Stevens and tony Oxley in the 1970s – but then took a key role in popularising the ‘British jazz boom’ of the 1980s, by co-leading the hitmaking latin-soul band Working Week with guitarist Simon Booth. In the fourth decade of his remarkable career, larry Stabbins continues to straddle idioms. His last album, Stonephace, was an atmospheric loops-session with portishead guitarist adrian Utley, but his latest – Transcendental – is a soulful tribute to his saxophone heroes including John Coltrane, pharoah Sanders, Ben Webster and Sonny Rollins. the mercurial pianist Zoe Rahman (a band partner of Stabbins’ in Jerry Dammers’ eclectic Spatial aKa Orchestra), joins bassist Karl Rasheed-abel, and percussionists Crispin ‘Spry’ Robinson and pat Illingworth in this energetic and unusual ensemble.

JF

HEAR ME TALKIN’ TO YA FREE

CHICK COREa talK

7pmBarbican

Masterful acoustic pianist Chick Corea talks with Julian Joseph about his illustrious career in advance of his evening’s concert with bassist Christian McBride and drummer Brian Blade.

This event will be broadcast in Jazz Line-Up on Sun 27 Jan 2013. bbc.co.uk/radio3

25londonjazzfestival.org.uk

tomm

y Evans

RODRIgUEZ SOlD OUtQUEUE FOR

REtURNS+ pHaNtOM lIMB7.30pm Southbank Centre/Royal Festival Hall

One of the most fascinating stories in contemporary music is that of Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, the Mexican-american folk musician. In 1967 the singer released I’ll Slip Away through a small record label. three years later he recorded two albums, Cold Fact and Coming from Reality. Neither won him any success in america and he disappeared from the music scene. little did Rodriguez know, a bootleg copy of Cold Fact had made its way to South africa where it became the unofficial soundtrack to youth protests against apartheid, creating a huge fan base on the other side of the world. In the mid-1990s two South african Rodriguez fans, Stephen ‘Sugar’ Segerman and Craig Bartholemew, went on a mission to discover what had really happened to their musical hero. they found him alive and well, living in Detroit, working in construction. Just a few years later Rodriguez returned to music and was performing sold-out shows in South africa, to thousands of fans he never knew he had. Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul, turned this incredible story into the documentary Searching for Sugar Man, which won two prizes at the Sundance Film Festival, and has brought about a delayed world-wide appreciation for the music of Rodriguez.

RH

See pg.4 for information on Phantom Limb

After four sold out London shows, Rodriguez

tours nationally until the end of the month

EgBERtO gISMONtI+ JOHN laW’S CONgREgatION 7.30pm Southbank Centre/Queen Elizabeth Hall

Egberto Gismonti piano, guitar

John Law Trio / John Law piano /

Yuri Goloubev bass / Asaf Sirkis percussion

Few artists justify the description ‘complete musician’ better than Egberto gismonti – the Brazilian pianist who studied classical composition with the inspirational Nadia Boulanger, a self-taught guitarist who adopted the lute-like ten-stringed instrument, student of Brazilian indigenous music, unique synthesiser of samba, funk, blues, jazz, ethnic and classical forms, symphonic composer, and much more. For this unaccompanied performance, gismonti plays just guitar and piano, but his solo concerts have been holding audiences entranced since the late 1970s. He was born in Carmo, Brazil, in 1947, learning the piano throughout childhood, and travelling to paris as a teenager to study orchestration and composition with Boulanger and Jean Barraque. Returning home in 1966, he became fascinated with the Brazilian choro dance form, taught himself the guitar, lived in the amazon jungle with the Xingu Indians in 1977, and listened to Django Reinhardt and Jimi Hendrix. gismonti began touring in the late ‘70s with some of his country’s most celebrated musical innovators, including percussionist airto Moreira, composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto pascoal and vocalist Flora purim. From 1976, he began a long relationship with ECM Records through sessions with Nana Vasconcelos, Jan garbarek, Charlie Haden and others, and in the 1990s composed extensively for ballet and cinema. In more recent times, gismonti has recorded with orchestras, with a Cuban string ensemble and with his guitarist son alexandre, in scintillating reappraisals of his lifelong commitment to uniting European and Brazilian music.

John law was a prodigy on the piano whose first public classical performances were in his early childhood. He studied formally at london’s Royal academy of Music and in Vienna, but became interested in jazz in his early 20s – involvement in the British free-improvisation scene soon followed, and by the late 1980s law was playing with Evan parker, Barry guy, louis Moholo, and other free-jazz luminaries. In the next decade, law divided his time between the cutting-edge jazz group he led with saxophonist Jon lloyd, and improvisations on mediaeval plainchant and classical music. From 2005, influenced by american pianist Brad Mehldau’s trio recordings, law moved toward more lyrical and regularly-rhythmic music. He has recently released the album Three Steps of the Gazelle with his current trio, featuring the powerful drummer asaf Sirkis, and classically-trained Russian bass virtuoso Yuri goloubev.

JF

paRallEl: a tRIBUtE tO JOE HaRRIOtt7.45pmSouthbank Centre/purcell Room

Peter Edwards Musical Director, piano / Ian

Bumstead, Nathanial Facey, Binker Golding

saxophones / Will Gibson clarinet, flute / Byron

Wallen, Laura Jurd trumpets / Rob Harvey, Rosie

Turton trombones / Neil Charles double bass /

Andy Chapman drums

alto saxophonist Joe Harriott’s 1960s albums Free Form and Abstract are now regarded, four decades after their release, as British jazz breakthroughs from an independent jazz creator of rare vision. Jamaican-born Harriott, who emigrated to Britain in 1951, was first inspired by Charlie parker, and played fiery alto in a variety of swing-to-bop British groups including Ronnie Scott’s shortlived 1955 big band. But, following prolonged hospitalisation for tuberculosis in which he dreamed up his own approach to collective improvisation – to some extent inspired, as he observed himself, by picasso’s abstract paintings – Harriott emerged in 1960 with a version of free-jazz that paralleled Ornette Coleman’s related investigations in america. the saxophonist went on to participate in jazz-and-poetry sessions with composer Michael garrick, and in a pioneering east-west world-jazz hybrid with violinist John Mayer on Indo Jazz Fusions in 1966-7.

Harriott died at only 44 in 1973, but his legacy has been rekindled since the late 1980s through the rising influence of musicians of african Caribbean descent on the British jazz scene, for whom he is an iconic figure. One of the most significant, as a bandleader and an educator, has been the double-bassist gary Crosby OBE, co-founder of the 11-piece Nu Civilisation Orchestra with arranger and conductor peter Edwards. In a multimedia performance as part of the lively Up! 50th-anniversary celebrations of Jamaican independence, Edwards conducts the group on his own large-ensemble arrangements of music from the Free Form and Abstract albums, with accompanying visual art from newcomer Emma godebska. 

JF

There will be one of interval of 20 mins

CHICK COREa / CHRIStIaN McBRIDE / BRIaN BlaDE 8pmBarbican

Chick Corea piano / Christian McBride

double bass / Brian Blade drums

armando ‘Chick’ Corea has had a global reputation as a pianist, composer and bandleader since the late 1960s – and collected 18 grammy awards in the process. Born in Massachusetts in June 1941, he first appeared as a sideman with percussionist Mongo Santamaria in 1962, joined saxophonist Stan getz in 1967, followed by Sarah Vaughan and then Miles Davis in 1968. Corea played free-jazz in 1970, then latin-tinged jazz-rock with Return to Forever and the Elektric Band, and a wide range of acoustic jazz. Corea has since explored sublime duo dialogues with vibraphonist gary Burton, banjo star Bela Fleck and others. He recently revisited fusion in the grammy-winning Five peace Band, alongside guitarist John Mclaughlin – but the classic piano trio has long remained a favourite outlet. Corea’s great trios have featured bass stars Miroslav Vitous, avishai Cohen, and Eddie gomez, and drummers Roy Haynes, paul Motian, and Jeff Ballard – but the current edition, formed in 2010, is a worthy successor.

philadelphia bassist Christian McBride is not only a powerhouse on his instrument, but a man who doesn’t blink at sustaining several careers – as a player, composer, arranger, educator, artistic director and vocal campaigner against racism in the arts. McBride has composed a suite dedicated to the civil rights movement, participated in duos or led big bands, and not only worked with jazz legends including Sonny Rollins and McCoy tyner, but also pioneers of R&B, pop and hip-hop like James Brown, Chaka Khan, D’angelo and Sting. louisiana-born drummer Brian Blade is widely known for his dynamic work with saxophonist Wayne Shorter, but he’s also accompanied pioneers from Joni Mitchell and Bill Frisell to Bob Dylan, and has shown himself to be a composer of rousingly soulful material – inspired by New Orleans and by gospel and church music – with his own acclaimed Fellowship Band.

JF

There will be no interval in this concert

This event will be broadcast in Jazz Line-Up on Sun 27 Jan 2013. bbc.co.uk/radio3

Chick Corea selected a Yamaha CFX piano26

londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Saturday 17 November

Festival Picks

NEIL COWLEY TRIOartists

Bill FrisellMon 12 Queen Elizabeth HallI’ve listened to Bill Frisell for

20yrs. He’s constantly thrilled me with his inventiveness

Chick Corea / Christian McBride / Brian Blade

Sat 17 Barbican For the reason that Brian Blade

is the freshest drummer I’ve heard in the last five years

Damo SuzukiSun 18 Village Undergound

Because when ‘Can’ originally chose him to be their singer, he was wandering along the road

and it was ten mins before a gig!

Rodriguez

Sunday November18

KaIROS 4tEt WITH OMAR+ ERIC lEgNINI & EMIlIa MåRtENSSON8pmKings place/Hall two

Kairos 4tet / Adam Waldmann saxophones /

Ivo Neame piano / Jasper Høiby bass / Jon Scott

drums / Omar Lye-Fook guest vocals

Eric Legnini piano / Tomas Bramerie bass

/ Franck Agulhon drums / Emilia Mårtensson

vocals

Kairos 4tet comprises four of the leading young jazz musicians on the current london scene. led by saxophonist adam Waldmann, the quartet also features phronesis front man and bassist Jasper Høiby, pianist Ivo Neame and drummer Jon Scott. a trinity College of Music graduate, Waldmann was selected as a Serious take Five participant in the seventh edition of the scheme, which helped establish him as one of the most distinctive young saxophonists on the circuit. Kairos 4tet are a band passionate about the political, social and cultural issues that surround everyday life and they strive to make music in an honest and personal way that somehow reflects the complexity of modern day living. the group won the 2011 Mobo for best jazz act and have recently recorded with soul legend Omar, after he and Waldmann met at the award ceremony. their album Statement of Intent (Edition Records) a musically intelligent opus, was met with wide critical acclaim and also features the expressive vocals of Emilia Mårtensson.

a new collaboration for the Festival, between singer Emilia Mårtensson and pianist Eric legnini. legnini is a musician keen for challenges and opportunities to work with new people from differing backgrounds to himself. this collaboration sees him perform with singer Emilia Mårtensson, who left her homeland of Sweden in 2000 to study jazz at trinity College of Music. after graduating she established herself as an important and captivating voice on the london jazz scene, becoming a much sought after vocalist. She combines melodies from simple traditional folk songs from her native country with contemporary songs to stunning effect.

RH

tOM CaWlEY DO

WORKSHOp11amSouthbank Centre/level 5 Function Room

pianist/composer tom Cawley leads a workshop aimed at improving technique and performance skills for keys players.

Ages 11–16

JaZZ FOR tODDlERS DO

WItH ORpHY FaMIlY

ROBINSON 2pmKings place/St. pancras Room

to prove you are never too young to give jazz a try, vibraphonist Orphy Robinson and early years specialist Hopal Romans host our Jazz for toddlers workshops for 2–5 year olds – who must be accompanied by parents/carers. Expect lots of fun, music and movement, plus some ideas to take away with you and try at home.

JaZZ all StaRS FaMIlY

FAMILY FRIENDLY MATINEE2pmSouthbank Centre/purcell Room

Natalie Williams vocals, compere / Nathaniel

Facey saxophone / Kevin Robinson trumpet /

Tom Cawley piano / Robin Mullarky bass /

Chris Higginbottom drums

Jazz educators know that young children with few preconceptions can be very receptive listeners – but they get limited opportunities to hear live jazz. Jazz all Stars Family Friendly Matinee has been shaped purposefully with this in mind. programmed at a time of day where bigger and smaller fans of the genre can enjoy top quality music in a relaxed, friendly environment together – Jazz all Stars features a bespoke london band playing those most invitingly inclusive of jazz materials – standard songs, grooves, and the blues in a sixty minute set.

Natalie Williams, a resident artist at Ronnie Scott’s Club in recent years, is a Mobo-nominated soul, jazz and R&B singer who discovered jazz through her father’s record collection – which prominently featured Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and aretha Franklin. Sought-after trumpeter/composer Kevin Robinson is one of the Musical Directors of the award-winning Jazz Jamaica all Stars and directed and arranged Soul Noël produced by Serious in December 2009. Bass guitarist Robin Mullarkey has played jazz, electronica, soul, R&B, and trip-hop with lounge-music duo Zero 7, and classically-trained pianist, first-call sideman and conservatoire teacher tom Cawley (a former cornerstone of popular nu- funk ensemble acoustic ladyland) is currently involved in one of Europe’s finest acoustic-piano trios, Curios. Drummer Chris Higginbottom has worked with leading jazz creators both at home in Britain and in his adopted New York, and alto saxophonist Nathaniel Facey – a former member of tomorrow’s Warriors and co-founder of the internationally-acclaimed Empirical – has performed with american jazz stars including pianist Jason Moran and drummer Jack DeJohnette, and toured with Specials founder Jerry Dammers’ Spatial aKa Orchestra.

JF There will be no interval in this concert

JOHN SURMaN2pmSouthbank Centre/Queen Elizabeth Hall

John Surman saxophones / Howard Moody

conductor / with Bolsterone Male Voice Choir

When he roared out of England’s west country with art student Mike Westbrook’s big band in the late 1960s, the young John Surman was doing the apparently impossible – playing a derivation of John Coltrane’s marathon improvisations and multiphonic overblowing on the baritone saxophone, a bulky instrument unsuited to pyrotechnics. Surman has been a key figure – as a reeds-player, composer and electronics innovator – on the European jazz scene ever since. He made pungent saxophone contributions to guitarist John Mclaughlin’s debut album, Extrapolation, in 1969, and co-led one of the world’s great post-Coltrane saxophone groups in the trio (with bassist Barre phillips and drummer Stu Martin), in the early 1970s. His 1972 solo project, Westering Home, was closer to folk-music in its lyrical sound-collages, and he went on to diverse collaborations with drummer/pianist Jack DeJohnette, singer Karin Krog, pianists paul Bley and John taylor, arranger John Warren and guitarist terje Rypdal. this concert showcases some of Surman’s solo music from his new ECM album Saltash Bells – a poetic evocation of his west country childhood – but its main focus is on the BBC Radio 3 and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2012 commission ‘lifelines’. Evoking Surman’s Devon background (through the theme of smuggling) and life in West Yorkshire during the industrial revolution, the piece is scored for saxophones, piano, and the prizewinning Bolsterstone Male Voice Choir. ‘lifelines’ draws on Surman’s lifelong love of English choral music, and the ways it can be used as a backdrop for evocative saxophone improvisations. It also reunites him with classically-trained keyboardist Howard Moody, his church-organ partner on the hypnotic 2008 album Rain on the Window. 

JF

There will be no interval in this concert

This event will be broadcast in The Choir on Sun 30 Dec. bbc.co.uk/radio3

EMIlIa DO

MåRtENSSON FaMIlY BIG SING2pmBarbican/garden Room

Swedish songstress Emilia Mårtensson leads a fun sing-along vocal workshop, designed for the whole family. Some singing experience would be welcomed.

Recommended for ages 12+

27londonjazzfestival.org.uk

Festival Picks

VANESSA REED Executive Director,

pRS for Music Foundation

Shabaka Hutchings & The BBC Concert Orchestra

tue 13 Queen Elizabeth HallGreat chance to hear quirky and energetic Sons of Kemet

perform a brand new piece with orchestra

Ayanna Witter Johnsonand Gwyneth Herberttue 13 Royal albert Hall/

Elgar RoomTalented women with

exceptionally distinctive voices – one not to miss!

Take Five Europe: LiveSat 17 Southbank Centre/

the Front RoomTen up-and-coming stars

creating the future of jazz in Europe – hear them perform

together

Kairos 4tet

28

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JaZZ IN tHE ROUND FREE

WITH YARON HERMAN, FOFOULAH, CHRIS DAVE, VERYAN WESTON & TREVOR WATTS2pm Southbank Centre/the Clore Ballroom

Fofoulah / Biram Seck vocals /

Tom Challenger saxophone, synths /

Phil Stevenson guitar / Kaw Secka sabar

Veryan Weston piano / Trevor Watts

saxophone

Chris Dave drums

Yaron Herman Quartet / Yaron Herman

piano / Emile Parisien saxophone / Stephane

Kerecki bass / Ziv Ravitz drums

a special edition of Jez Nelson’s Jazz In the Round, brought from the Cockpit theatre to the london Jazz Festival to showcase global talents Fofoulah, Veryan Weston and trevor Watts, Chris Dave and Yaron Herman.

london-based Fofoulah is a fairly new group formed in 2010 which features members of Outhouse Ruhabi. they mix influences from african praise songs and polyrhythms, cool grooves and jumpy melodies. While continuing to explore the influence of west african rhythms, their creative vision embraces each individual members’ musical personalities, creating a fresh and individual musical mix.

pianist Veryan Weston and saxophonist trevor Watts have been playing as a duo in the ‘Dialogues’ project for over four years. While this is purely improvised music, the strong connections between the musicians constantly give each piece a sense of perspective, structure and most importantly a compositional identity. the duo rely on their instinctive spirit to feel their way through improvised music with a trust for one another’s discipline and experience.

Chris Dave has an extremely impressive portfolio. He has recorded and performed with some of music’s most established artists including adele, terence Blanchard, Wynton Marsalis, pat Metheny, MF Doom, Sonny Rollins, Mos Def and more. Born in texas, Chris “Daddy” Dave, began his music career in the late 1980s and is now one of the most revered and in demand drummers of his generation. His eccentric approach to the drum set and his versatility has put him in a category of his own.

tel aviv born Yaron Herman is considered to be one of the most impressive pianists of his generation. His new quartet album, Alter Ego shows a different side to the musician, revealing an introspective and intimacy to his playing not heard in his previous works. Herman’s prodigious piano skills have earned him huge respect the world over, but he is also regarded as an influential lecturer and skilled researcher, bringing music, philosophy and maths together to present his theories and papers at top European universities in between gigging. He has an exceptional gift for analysing works by the masters, but is also forging himself a reputation as a piano master.

RH

This event will be broadcast in Jazz on 3 on Mon 26 Nov. bbc.co.uk/radio3

DUNCaN HEININg FREE

4pm talK

Southbank Centre/the Front Room

a discussion and Q&a session with acclaimed author Duncan Heining on the subject of his new book, Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers: British Jazz, 1960-1975.

ROYal aCaDEMY FREE

OF MUSIC BIg BaNDKENNY WHEELER: THE LOST SCORES6pmSouthbank Centre/the Front Room

Matthew Herd, Ronan Perret, Sam Rapley,

Sam Miles saxophones / Louis Dowdeswell, James

Copus, Ben Rodney, Christodoulos Aspromallis,

Tom Walsh trumpets / Tom Green, Owen Dawson,

Alex Paxton trombones / Sam Watts piano / Todd

Oliver-Fishmann guitar / Flo Moore bass / Scott

Chapman drums

at the beginning of this year, news broke that the internationally-revered trumpeter and composer Kenny Wheeler had given the complete archive of his work to london’s Royal academy of Music – original scores to his most famous pieces and a raft of material that has rarely been performed. Wheeler has a close association with the academy as a visiting teacher (and, at times, as a modest workshop participant who would simply drop in for a chance to jam), and the connection is celebrated in this performance by the academy Big Band under the direction of the conservatoire’s Head of Jazz programmes, Nick Smart. Wheeler classics, and newly-revealed gems, will feature in this fascinating prologue to the evening’s performance by the composer’s own ensemble.

JF

NORaaY FREE

6pmBarbican Freestage

Noraay vocals / Stefanos Tsourelis oud,

acoustic guitar / Matt Constantine electric cello,

keyboard / Jon Mapp double bass, bass guitar /

DJ Tigerstyle turntables, MPC 2000 drum machine

British-Moroccan singer-songwriter and producer Noraay combines neo-soul, R&B, hip-hop and arabic music, in an intoxicating mix. She has been making waves in the neo-soul/world music scene for the last eight years and brings her new project ‘Creation’ to the london Jazz Festival. Hands on, pro-active and determined, she is an artist who looks forward while acknowledging her musical heritage. as she says “I’ve taken my love of neo-soul, R&B and hip-hop, my British-Moroccan heritage, and my experience and perspective on life, mixed them up and served up something fresh.”

NEXt FREE

gENERatIONtaKES OVERNATIONAL YOUTH JAZZ ORCHESTRA OF SCOTLAND WITH RICK TAYLORRONNIE SCOTT’S BIG BAND IN A DAY: THE BEST OF NATIONAL YOUTH JAZZ COLLECTIVEtrioVD & EAST LONDON CREATIVE JAZZ ORCHESTRABarbican Freestage

In recent years, the last Sunday afternoon of the london Jazz Festival at the Barbican has become a focus for collaborations between established artists and student bands – the culmination of workshop projects that give young players an insight into how this inclusive and spontaneous way of music-making works.

Directed by Malcolm Edmonstone and andrew Bain, National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland (1.15pm) kick off the afternoon, led by Rick taylor. ‘Ronnie Scott’s Big Band in a Day’ (3pm), brings together some of the best of the young participants who have been mentored by the resident Jazz Orchestra at Ronnie Scott’s during 2012. Following them is a talented octet formed under the wing of the high-profile National Youth Jazz Collective, and shortlisted for the 2012 Young Composers’ award run by Surrey’s Watermill Jazz Club (4pm). the East london Creative Jazz Orchestra, formed for the educational programme run by the visiting lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra in 2010, provides the afternoon’s full-on finale (5.15pm), with music developed through workshops with blistering leeds-based group trioVD, three of the most viscerally exciting genre-benders to emerge on the British scene in recent years.

JF

Sunday 18 November Yaron H

erman by Julien M

ignot

JIM Hall tRIO+ KENNY WHEElER BIg BaND7.30pm Southbank Centre/Queen Elizabeth Hall

Jim Hall Trio / Jim Hall guitar / Steve La

Spina bass / Anthony John Pinciotti drums

Kenny Wheeler Big Band / Kenny Wheeler

flugel / Ray Warleigh, Duncan Lamont, Stan

Sulzmann, Evan Parker, Julian Arguelles

saxophones / Derek Watkins, John Barclay,

Henry Lowther, Nick Smart trumpets / Mark

Nightingale, Gordon Campbell, Barnaby

Dickenson, Dave Stewart trombones / Gwilym

Simcock piano / John Parricelli guitar / Chris

Laurence bass / Martin France drums /

Pete Churchill conductor

this double-bill showcases a pair of jazz innovators who share two unusual attributes – they have both made their mark on an often clamorous music by understatement and obliqueness, and they’re both octogenarians who remain active creators. american guitarist and composer Jim Hall’s name regularly comes up when such contemporary guitar stars as Bill Frisell, pat Metheny or John Scofield discuss their influences. Hall was a breath of cool air in the 1950s, when many jazz guitarists sought to mirror the often hyperactive phrasing of bebop. listeners outside of the jazz loop probably first heard him softly playing ‘the train and the River’ with saxophonist Jimmy giuffre’s trio in the iconic Jazz on a Summer’s Day movie, but he had already worked in drummer Chico Hamilton’s latin-jazz crossover group (from 1955 to ’56), and in the 1960s and ’70s would operate in his quietly conversational, harmonically advanced manner with such stars as Sonny Rollins (their landmark album The Bridge was released fifty years ago in 1962), Bill Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, george Shearing and the classical violinist Itzhak perlman. Sophisticated in classical as well as jazz techniques, Hall continues to compose extensively, and perform with such partners as former student Bill Frisell.

the expat Canadian trumpeter Kenny Wheeler’s big band shares this concert, with the london premiere of The Long Waiting – written in 2010 for his 80th birthday. Wheeler originals like ‘Everybody’s Song But My Own’ and ‘Kind Folk’ have become contemporary jazz standards, and The Long Waiting features several new Wheeler themes – typically graceful and songlike melodies, warmed by his unique harmonic language. Kenny Wheeler’s composing has frequently been compared to that of gil Evans, and his achievements since emigrating from Canada in 1952 – including membership of the John Dankworth, Clarke-Boland and globe Unity orchestras, the small groups of tubby Hayes, Joe Harriott and Dave Holland, free-improvisation with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and anthony Braxton – have been as spectacular as his demeanour has been legendarily diffident. Wheeler, pianist John taylor and vocalist Norma Winstone also co-led one of the great European improvising chamber-groups with azimuth and this remarkable original has worked fruitfully with saxophonists lee Konitz and Jane Ira Bloom, and guitarist Bill Frisell.

JF

aRa DINKJIaN7.45pmSouthbank Centre/purcell Room

Ara Dinkjian oud / Sokratis Sinopoulos lyra

/ Yannis Kirimkiridis piano, keyboards / Vangelis

Karipis percussion

the oud might seem like an exotically specialised addition to a jazz oriented line-up, but since it’s been as adaptable and widely-played in the Middle East as guitars have been in the West, perhaps it’s surprising that this expressive lute-like instrument didn’t claim its jazz place sooner. Over the past two decades however, the oud’s characteristic chime and edgy attack have played an increasingly significant role, in the hands of such open-minded artists as Beirut- born Rabih abou-Khalil (who has worked with such jazz notables as Charlie Mariano, antonio Hart and Kenny Wheeler) or the tunisian anouar Brahem, who has performed with Jan garbarek, John Surman and Dave Holland. ara Dinkjian is a New Jersey-born oud maestro of armenian ancestry, whose early musical experiences were accompanying his father Onnik Dinkjian, an armenian traditional singer. Studying the oud alongside western instruments including the guitar at Connecticut’s Hartt College, however, Dinkjian developed a personal music that drew on both anatolian traditions and american jazz. In 1986 he formed his ensemble Night ark with armenian percussion virtuoso arto tuncboyaciyan, and the group developed this distinctive new repertoire across over five albums between 1986 and 2000. as a composer, Dinkjian has written hit songs for greece’s Eleftheria arvanitaki (who performed his ‘Homecoming’ on the closing ceremony of the 2004 athens Olympics) and turkey’s Sezen aksu, and over the past six years his solo career has taken off, with the lyrical, virtuosic and highly accessible albums An Armenian in America (2006) and Peace on Earth (2008). Dinkjian’s ensemble has since performed in Europe, america, Canada and Israel, and in 2010 the original Night ark line-up reconvened for a triumphant performance at the Jerusalem International Oud Festival.

JF

There will be an interval of 20 mins

This concert is produced by Kazum!

DaVID MURRaY BIg BaND & MaCY gRaYSTOMpING AND SINGIN’ THE BLUES+ JaY pHElpS BaND 8pmBarbican

Macy Gray vocals / David Murray Director,

saxophone / Nathaniel Cross, Trevor Edwards,

Tom White trombones / Tony Kofi, Chris Biscoe

alto saxophones / Brian Edwards, Richie Ian

Garrison tenor saxophones / Lawrence Wesley

Jones baritone saxophone / Rassul Siddik, Mario

Felix Morejon Hernandez, Byron Wallen

trumpets / Mingus Murray guitar / Ranzel Merritt

drums / Jaribu Shahid bass / Marc Cary piano,

Hammond organ

Jay Phelps Band / Jay Phelps trumpet /

Tim Thornton double bass / Ross Stanley piano /

Moses Boyd drums

award-winning New York based saxophonist David Murray has been recording since the 1970s, he has written two operas and is a prolific arranger, performer and composer, and was a founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet. Via this extensive career, he is already

heralded as a jazz icon and his immense virtuosity is recognised the world over. Here he leads a specially formed blues and roots big band comprised of players from america and Britain and guides them through his own blues and soul drenched arrangements. Macy gray has sold over 15 million records worldwide, a distinctive singer

with trademark gravel-toned vocals. She has won two MtV awards and two grammys. She is most famed for her hit ‘I try’. gray claims jazz icon Billie Holiday as her biggest influence and the breadth of her musical interests are reflected in her latest album, Covered, released in March this year, which features re-workings of tracks from the likes of Metallica, arcade Fire, My Chemical Romance, Radiohead and Kanye West.

Canadian born trumpeter Jay phelps came to the UK when he was 17 and was soon talent-spotted by Dune Music’s artistic Director gary Crosby. phelps was subsequently invited to play with Jazz Jamaica and Nu troop, which led to a place in tomorrow’s Warriors. He was the founding member and co-leader of the hip jazz sensation Empirical, and now, is forging a successful solo career via an impressive debut album Jay Walkin’. the hardworking, charismatic trumpeter is increasingly active on the circuit and his open-minded approach makes him one of the British scene’s most exciting young musicians.

RH

29londonjazzfestival.org.uk

T H E f E s T I VA l C D E X C H A N G E

following the enthusiasm and success of

last year’s CD exchange, we’re hosting one again this year on saturday 17 November

from 2–4pm on The Clore Ballroom floor at southbank Centre’s Royal festival Hall. If you

have any CDs you’d like to get rid of, bring them along, and you might find a few gems

to take away with you in return.

SOlD OUtQUEUE FOR

REtURNS

Macy gray

30

londonjazzfestival.org.uk

the evolution of jazz over the past half century has seen a sea-change in the way the music has stimulated, absorbed and re-invented a vast range of global influences, responding to a world where cultural change is influenced by shifting populations and a revolution in communication technology. Jazz created an impact in Europe since its practitioners began to travel outside North america, taking root through the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s throughout the continent, with the african-american language of jazz becoming a significant and growing presence in European music. By the 1960s, though, the impetus began to change, with European musicians not only mastering the jazz art, but finding their own responses, often influenced by their own musical and cultural traditions.

Francesco Martinelli has written eloquently elsewhere in this programme (p.34) about the emergence of jazz composers in the UK whose music demonstrated a character that, however varied from artist to artist, could be seen to reflect the cultures of their country of birth as well as the jazz mainstream. parallels can be found elsewhere in Europe, whether in the evolution of free improvisation since the 1960s from a specifically European perspective – germany, the Netherlands and the UK being prime movers, perhaps; or in a myriad of different approaches and different strands in Eastern Europe (where jazz and improvised music made its own provocative and telling statement before the breaking down of the Iron Curtain), in Scandinavia, in France and in Italy. Intriguingly, the movements were both national (or even regional) as well as continental – communication across borders became increasingly prevalent, with creative collaboration at the heart. additionally, the presence of incoming communities – the Caribbean and african communities in France, the Netherlands and the UK is but one example – have contributed to this evolution.

the london Jazz Festival has always had a commitment to searching out and presenting the key figures in European jazz, whether long-established or new to the scene. Jazz in the New Europe – a programme that is supported through a one year grant from the Culture programme of the European Union – aims to explore this richly varied territory. the themes of this programme reflect current thinking around European cultural policy more generally – the terms transnational and inter-generational recur, as do fundamental issues around cultural and gender diversity.

Hence a programme of international collaboration that brings together two hugely influential figures in Scandinavian jazz, Karin Krog – one of the seminal figures in the extraordinary development of Norwegian jazz – and the Swedish pianist Bengt Hallberg, one of the first Europeans to really dig into the essence of bebop. german pianist Julia Hulsmann and British trumpeter tom arthurs; Eric legnini (born in Belgium of Italian parents, resident in France) and Emilia Mårtensson (Swedish singer living in london); the Estonian guitarist Jaak Soäär and lithuanian saxophonist liudas Mockunas; Hungarian violinist Robi Farkas and Scottish pianist Brian Kellock; and a series of ad hoc duets as part of adventures in Sound – a special BBC Radio 3 Jazz on 3 event built around Cafe OtO’s residency of one of the larger-than-life figures in European improvised music, peter Brötzmann.

jAzz INTHENEw

EURoPE

31londonjazzfestival.org.uk

the passing down of information and creative ideas from generation to generation is at the heart of a specially formed octet built around the trio of the French master bassist Henri texier, whose distinguished career stretches back to playing with Bud powell and Dexter gordon in 1960s paris, and whose music

transcends style, often referencing north africa and eastern Europe – he has referred to jazz as being the first world music... With young and not-so-young musicians from France, the Netherlands and the UK, this will be one of the centre points of Jazz in the New Europe.

a second commissioned project brings together two exciting young big bands and their leaders – Norway’s Ensemble Denada and Helge Sunde alongside the UK’s Beats & pieces with Ben Cottrrell – to explore new directions in creating music for large

jazz ensembles – both contemporary examples of a sequence of hugely influential European big bands that stretches back into the 1960s.

a further strand brings artists into a city that is a cultural melting pot in its own right, and where communities from throughout Europe have put down their own roots. greek saxophonist Dimitri Vassilakis, Bosnian singer amira and Serbian/French pianist Bojan Z, polish newcomers

Jazzpospolita and Nicolas Simion’s Romanian group play at venues across the city – and turkish saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin brings his storming Istanbul sessions into Charlie Wright’s, with special guests from Catalunya (drummer Marc ayza), France (fast rising saxophoinist guillaume

perret) and the UK (Chris Sharkey and Orphy Robinson).

With panel sessions that explore the past, present and future of jazz in Europe, this programme inhabits and enhances the entire Festival programme. But there is, of course more to Jazz in the New Europe...

an intensive programme of music from Finland includes artists who have made essential contributions to the country’s jazz scene – pianist/harpist Iro Haarla and Juhani aaltonen play alongside emerging artists who are making their own international mark, in some cases performing for the first time in the UK. Iiro Rantala, anna Mari Kähärän and groups such as Black Motor, Rakka, Kuara and Oddarrang all bring an individual quality that communicates beyond borders. a similar range of artists from France, including the ebullient saxophonist/ vocalist thomas de pourquery, award-winning drummer anne paceo and the brilliant trumpeter Stephane Belmondo all make British debuts; whilst one of last year’s Festival surprise packages, guillaume perret, returns with Electric Epic, who have made a major breakthrough in his home country this year.

also worth marking are a myriad of club and concert performances by a clutch of radical Norwegians (Supersilent, puma, albatrosh are just three); from germany, pianist Michael Wollny and the Radio String Quartet; and the extraordinary polish pianist leszek Mozdzer... and the presence in the Festival of perhaps the most successful and distinctive European jazz voices of the past half century, Jan garbarek, is yet another part of the fabric.

take Five: Europe live is the performance outcome of a professional development programme also funded by the Culture programme of the European Union, and combines the talents of ten performer/composers from five countries (France, the Netherlands, Norway, poland and the UK, honed in workshops and performance through the year – and proves yet again the ability of musicians from the jazz community to work together to develop new music that breaks through frontiers whilst retaining the individual creativity of each participant. the take Five spirit of exchange and collaboration is at the heart of jazz – and this spirit lies at the heart of Jazz in the New Europe.

John Cumming Director, Serious

(Clockwise from top left)

Henri texier Julia Hülsmann by Volker Beushausen Emilia Mårtensson Karin Krog by Farger tom arthurs

rW i t e O n!

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Opinion is divided over who said it first, although the phrase is usually attributed to Frank Zappa. But, hey, even Uncle Frankie doesn’t know everything. perhaps more than most other genres of popular music, jazz has enjoyed a long tradition of journalists, critics and commentators bending all their faculties to the seemingly counter-intuitive task of grasping the ineffable and conveying the inexpressible. From the hip, street level declamations of amiri Baraka to the avuncular pontificating of leonard Feather, the history of jazz contains a parallel history of jazz criticism, of writers who looked for ways of internalising the spontaneous outpourings of musicians and passing on their essence for others to experience through the medium of the written word. It’s not, by any means, an easy thing to do. and, for someone with a desire to do so but little real experience, the idea of finding a way of doing it for a living can seem impossibly daunting – almost crushingly remote.

But that’s exactly the situation being addressed by the Write Stuff, an innovative scheme run by london based music producers of the london Jazz Festival, Serious, in collaboration with Jazzwise, the UK’s biggest selling jazz publication. Each year since 2003, the Write Stuff has brought together a group of aspiring journalists – from complete beginners to semi-professionals – for an intensive weeklong course, held on london’s South Bank, during the london Jazz Festival in November. through a series of seminars and workshops featuring input from some of the UK’s most experienced jazz journalists and broadcasters, including Kevin le gendre, Jon Newey, Mike Flynn and alyn Shipton, participants on the Write Stuff are given a unique introduction to the art of writing about jazz.

It has to be said, for those taking part, it can be a pretty exciting experience: a week spent flitting around the South Bank, enjoying the sights and sounds and soaking up the atmosphere of the london Jazz Festival, darting from a gig in the purcell Room to catch a Freestage performance in the foyer of the Royal Festival Hall and then rushing off to the next seminar; a week of hanging out, making friends and forging new links. In such a high-pressure environment, it’s unsurprising that lasting camaraderie can be born. adrian Stevenson – who took part in the Write Stuff in 2008 and now blogs about jazz – maintains: “By taking part I’ve become part of the Serious extended family. I now come down for every london Jazz Festival and do a little bit of reviewing, catching up with a few of the Write Stuff alumni and having a chat with Kevin, Mike and whoever else is around.”

Most importantly, though, participants are there to take advantage of a course that is designed to offer a helping hand and take aspiring jazz writers to the next stage in their career. an element of competition is also introduced by the incentive that, at the end of the course, one participant will have their review of a london Jazz Festival gig published in the pages of Jazzwise. It can be enough to spur a nervous beginner on to become a successful player in the UK’s vibrant jazz media community. Rebecca aitchison also took part in the scheme in 2008, and moved

almost immediately afterwards into a job at Somethin’ Else, the content design company that produces the Jazz on 3 programme for BBC Radio 3. looking back, she remembers the Write Stuff as “a chance for likeminded people, at all different stages in their career to come together, share experiences and give advice to those starting out on how to focus and move forward. the Write Stuff was part of a portfolio of paid and unpaid work I gained in jazz journalism, all of which contributed to where I am today.”

Undeniably, the Write Stuff can provide a very welcome boost to a burgeoning career in jazz journalism – and the way it does it is essentially two-fold. Firstly, it enables participants to get to grips with the serious and sometimes mysterious business of actually writing about jazz – whether that’s in the context of a CD review, a feature article or a review of a live performance. this key skill of turning the subjective perception of music into intelligible written descriptions is largely imparted through a series of intensive seminars with the hugely experienced writer and broadcaster, Kevin le gendre.

Mark Youll, who was on the scheme in 2011 and has subsequently had work published in Jazzwise, explains just how effective the seminars can be. “prior to doing the Write Stuff I had been writing about rock and dance music for various magazines and websites, and although my musical origins and tastes lay in jazz, I never really understood how to overcome and deal with the complexities and essence of the subject on paper. Reading the likes of [critics such as] Stanley Crouch, John Fordham or Mike Hobart had always proved inspiring to me, but it wasn’t until the course, and the eye-opening classes with Kevin le gendre, that I started to understand and eventually demonstrate in words, the real sensitivity behind the subject, and indeed music as a whole. What Kevin described as ‘discovering the real essence of your subject’ has been lodged in my brain since the scheme. It’s a piece of information that has been with me at gigs, in interview situations, even reading other people’s work, and helped me write about music with much more tact and transparency.”Chris ackerley is another ex-participant who happily vouches for the value of the advice he received. He took part in 2006 and has gone on to write for Jazzwise, as well as working as a broadcast assistant on Jazz on 3. He recalls: “I was submitting reviews to websites before I completed the Write Stuff scheme, but in retrospect my copy was fairly infantile. Receiving advice from Kevin le gendre was definitely a highlight, and I have no doubts that my writing improved because of it. I feel that Kevin’s advice of finding insightful angles and avoiding clichés made me rethink the way I approach writing about music.”

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Music journalist Daniel Spicer, explains how the Write Stuff, an innovative scheme at the heart of the london Jazz Festival is giving aspiring jazz writers the tools they need to get started.

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Ed Randall, too, is someone who has benefitted from le gendre’s instruction. Since taking part in 2009, he’s worked as writer-in-residence at Ronnie Scott’s Brit-Jazz Festival in 2010, and he’s just finished an Ma in magazine journalism at City University london. But he knows he owes a lot to the lessons he received at the Write Stuff. “In a sense it nudged me towards journalism in the first place. I had hardly done any before the Write Stuff course, and the idea of examining the craft and mechanics of journalistic writing had never really occurred to me. I remember Kevin le gendre making the point that a huge part of writing reviews, especially live reviews, is simply about describing what happened. You’re the eyes and ears of your readers, and though they want opinion, they also want accurate, factual reporting. You’re also a mediator for a huge amount of information. If you’ve paid attention to the gig and done your research, you’ll never struggle to fill a standard newspaper or magazine word count, you’ll be brimming over with names of musicians, biographical background, observations about the venue, and so on. the great skill is in being judicious about how you can marshal that information to support the argument you want to make or the ‘story’ you want to tell.”

On top of these aesthetic pointers, workshops furnish participants with a keen grasp on the mechanics of writing – basic skills such as editing, researching, interviewing as well as working to deadlines and word counts. Further seminars tackle more specific subjects: Jon Newey, editor and publisher of Jazzwise, provides a historical analysis of jazz journalism in the UK; and Mike Flynn, assistant editor at Jazzwise, and previously jazz editor at Time Out, discusses writing for the web. Once armed with all this essential know-how, participants are ready to address the second vital strand of the Write Stuff: how to gain a foothold in the competitive world of jazz journalism.

Rosie Hanley was on the scheme in 2009 and now runs the jazz section on the online women’s music magazine The Girls Are, as well as working at Time Out and for the renowned international website All About Jazz. She’s fully aware how effectively a stint on the Write Stuff boosted her career. “It really kick-started it,” she says. “It gave me the confidence to seek new contacts and opportunities.” Chris ackerley also sings its praises: “taking part in the Write Stuff scheme definitely helped boost my career, and came at just the right moment in my personal development. Hearing from full time jazz journalists such as Kevin le gendre certainly gave me the confidence to pursue the path that I took. the most important thing that it gave me was access to a network of industry professionals. It enabled me to approach key journalists, editors and pRs in the future, and opened doors for me both in securing work and developing my skills.”

Ed Randall realises he probably wouldn’t be where he is today without that week spent on the South Bank: “It was a great contact-building exercise, which is so important in any kind of journalism, and especially in a small scene such as the jazz world. alyn Shipton had some great stories about his own career that illustrated the importance of being tenacious and taking initiative when it came to getting interviews with musicians. Especially when you’re starting out and possibly don’t have a big publication or broadcaster behind you, you need a certain amount of confidence and bluff to get your foot in the door. about a year after the Write Stuff, I was able to set up an interview with one of my all-time heroes – Jon Hendricks – and I think hearing alyn’s stories encouraged me to give it a go.”

Clearly, the Write Stuff is providing a valuable service – not just for the aspiring writers who take part, but for the wider jazz community in the UK – by bringing fresh minds and new perspectives to the way jazz is described, commented on and mediated to the jazz-loving public. What’s more, it shows no sign of stopping. Every year, more keen applicants sign up for a potentially life-changing week at the london Jazz Festival. So, this November, if you happen to catch sight of a huddle of wide-eyed enthusiasts, feverishly exchanging notes in a corner of the South Bank, you can probably safely assume they’re not dancing about architecture.

Daniel Spicer

Kevin le gendre by Emile Holba

the Festival thanks Company of Cooks for supporting this 10th anniversary event for the Write Stuff alumni.

arguably one of the greatest contributions that came from the UK to European jazz and, by extension, to global jazz, is a British tradition of jazz orchestras and related disciplines – composing, arranging, organising. this is not to diminish soloing or improvising – in fact in many respects these activities complement instrumental playing, setting it against a collective background – but from John Dankworth to Barry guy, running a whole gamut of expressive styles and including among others Kenny Wheeler, John Surman, Chris Mcgregor, Mike Westbrook and graham Collier, in the past 50 years there hasn’t been another European country that can boast such an impressive list of composers, arrangers, big band leaders and orchestras. this year’s london Jazz Festival explores...

the fascination of the British listening public with jazz was apparent from 1919, when the Original Dixieland Jazz Band played here and even produced some records; right after that, England produced in Jack Hylton the European equivalent of paul Whiteman. Much maligned; like his american correspondent, Hylton was nevertheless instrumental in changing the tastes of the dancing and listening public at large, and his tragically aborted idea of hiring Django Reinhardt gives proof of his vision. the unique personality of Spike Hughes also stands out – his 1933 recordings of his own compositions featured Benny Carter, Chu Berry, Coleman Hawkins, luis Russell: the cream of the orchestral jazz of the day, extracted from the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra and other Harlem units of the time. When later that year one of the most important jazz orchestras of all times toured England – the Duke Ellington Band – audiences and critics alike asked him to play more of his listening pieces and less “show music”. and later, in 1937, none other than Benny Carter – multi-instrumentalist and pioneer of jazz arrangement with Fletcher Henderson, McKinney’s Cotton pickers, and the Chocolate Dandies – was not just invited to perform, but was offered the direction of the Dance Orchestra of the BBC (london-born critic, author and man about jazz leonard Feather being instrumental in this eventful choice).

It’s worth speculating what might lie behind this British interest in “orchestral” jazz. Choral and brass band traditions have been mentioned as forerunners of jazz bands, and especially large aggregations. these are of course important elements in British musical culture; but other European countries with similar traditions have come into the big band scene. a more likely source might be an English school of composers whose atmospheric pieces run parallel to the program music of early jazz composing, to the Stampedes, the Moods and the many Ellingtonian trains.

after the war, European musicians received, with the first new records from the USa, the unheard of sounds of parker, powell and gillespie. Due to transatlantic cruising and to the shared language, England received more first-hand information, as witnessed by the

memories of Ronnie Scott and other players of his generation. Maybe the first modern big band in Europe was the one led by John Dankworth, who enlarged the brass section reducing the reeds to three horns, reconfiguring the sound of the orchestra in a septet playing along a brass choir. this unique texture was certainly an inspiration for modern arrangers, and it is not a coincidence that Dankworth gave Kenny Wheeler the first chance of leading an orchestra, with the 1969 The Windmill Tilter.

the bebop scene developed with force, and by the late 1950s advanced, bop-oriented big bands were performing and recording. among them one of the most influential was the Downbeat Big Band, formed at the club of the same name by tubby Hayes and Jack Sharpe with Ronnie Scott, Derek Humble, phil Seamen, Jimmy Deuchar, Dizzy Reece; it was the forerunner of the tubby Hayes Big Band which remained active on and off for more than a decade, inspiring musicians all over the country and coming to include among others pete King, Kenny Wheeler and alan Skidmore. the charts performed by this band in the late 1960s, though unfortunately little known today, sound remarkably open and forward-looking. across the Channel, in the Clarke-Boland Big Band, the german-based first transnational European enterprise of this kind, the English contingent was comparatively strong, and included tony Coe, Ronnie Scott, Derek Humble, tony Fisher and Kenny Clare,

bearing witness to the Continental relevance of English big band playing. In 1966 a milestone of orchestral jazz in England was set by Stan tracey with his Alice in Jazzland; the following year graham Collier began his unique career with Deep Dark Blue Centre, a septet recording that had an orchestral feeling and featured Kenny Wheeler, Mike gibbs, Karl Jenkins and John Marshall on a programme of originals. His following recordings focus on the relationships between the freedom of the improviser and the structure of the composition, trying not to find the impossible balance but going deeper and deeper in the exploration of this nexus, never using full section writing and keeping the size of his ensembles in that uneasy zone between the combo and the big band. Collier’s groundbreaking work in education was not only instrumental in forming generation after

generation of open-minded musicians, among them composer, leader and pianist Django Bates, but from his orchestral workshop the loose tubes band was born in the mid-80s, adding another link to the chain of connections between jazz in the UK and large ensembles.

What was seen then in the 70s as a complete break with the past – the birth of

free improvisation in the london-Wuppertal-amsterdam triangle – has revealed today (with the benefit of hindsight) stronger links with the past. this is after all what happened with the bebop revolution, when the heat of the times cooled down. the globe Unity Orchestra and the Instant Composers’ pool from the very start used materials from musicians now recognized as classic jazz composers, certainly helping american jazz itself to rediscover the depth of its history (Breuker went further back to Whiteman and grofé); in london the Incus catalogue between 1972 and 1973 included further experiments in orchestration and arrangements by Kenny Wheeler (Song for Someone) and Barry guy with the london Jazz Composers’ Orchestra (Ode). they marked a line of musical research and expression that continues to this day from musicians that occasionally and happily cooperated but whose interests lay in different areas – melodic and timbral synthesis for the trumpeter who works on his own derivation from the jazz tradition; integration and contrast between structures and improvisation for the bass player who devised his own system of notation and work.

In a reversal of roles, while big band jazz seemed forever a thing of the past in a mainstream jazz dominated by jazz-rock fusions or hardbop oriented small groups, it was the “avant-garde” that kept the flame burning: consider also experiments like Keith tippett’s memorable Centipede.

Unpredictably, an african component played a major role in london with the arrival of the South african exiles and the birth of the Brotherhood of Breath – the big band that evolved from the nucleus of Chris Mcgregor’s Blue Notes, which came to include in its various incarnations leading UK improvisers – Harry Beckett, paul Rutherford, Evan parker are just a few – alongside the South africans Dudu pukwana, Mongezi Feza and louis Moholo-Moholo.

a number of personal and artistic paths criss-crossed and at times crashed into each other in the 1970s, to the point that following each becomes very difficult, but there are two more key figures that need to be mentioned in this overview.

Mike Westbrook’s orchestral recordings of the first half of the 70s certainly had a major impact; Citadel/Room 315 with its dramatic setting of the improvisation by John Surman against the full band seemed to build on the experiences of Ellington updating them to current times, and his work since then carved another unique approach to orchestral and small group jazz with a deep sense of humour and theatre, using widely different materials to build an instantly recognisable sounds.

Michael garrick arrived in the 60s with his poetry and jazz experiments that included Joe Harriott, in my opinion one of the founding personalities of jazz in Europe. garrick was also a member of the well-known Rendell-Carr aggregation, but his orchestral activities began later, when after, an idiosyncratic development went to study in the 70s at Berklee in Boston. His compositions for organ, chorus, jazz and string orchestras pointedly aim to break the genre barrier, and work around the relationship between word/text/poetry and music, often expressed through the voice of Norma Winstone, an interpreter of choice for the European composers and increasingly acknowledged as a path-breaker of vocal conception in European jazz.

But the UK gave European jazz other ensembles of note, of a cooperative nature: loose tubes, already mentioned; and Jazz Warriors, openly dedicated to acknowledge and celebrate the african Diasporic identity in the UK and with a legacy that is still very much alive. In the best tradition of the big bands as survival and education units they served as spawning grounds for talents that could try their hands at writing for an improvising ensemble and now carry their 34

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Beats & pieces by Martin W

ilson

experience to an European level: among them Cleveland Watkiss and Orphy Robinson, Julian and Steve argüelles, Django Bates and Iain Ballamy.

In more recent years the diffusion of jazz education and international exchange programmes such as 12 points! and take Five: Europe have functioned as a hothouse for new talents like Ben Cottrell from Manchester who re-established the big band concept into a renewed sound, instantly appealing for the members of his generation, but at the same time, well aware of the tradition we just overviewed and points beyond.

the jazz orchestra carries the potential to integrate different voices and different cultures. Improvisation is a powerful tool to this end, and increasingly European musicians of the newest generations take advantage of the process of European integration to meet, understand and get a feeling for each other; maybe at some point an improvising, multicultural, multinational and multicoloured jazz orchestra will be representing Europe as much or better than a classical one with a choir stiffly singing an ode from an ancient german poet...

Music from many of the key figures included in this essay can be heard throughout this year’s Festival. Michael garrick’s music for both small and large ensembles; Joe Harriott’s ground-breaking 1960s compositions re-imagined by today’s Dune generation; Mike Westrook’s song-based trio reaches 30 years of creative life; a specially created programme of graham Collier’s music with member’s of the BBC Big Band joined by key members of Collier’s ensembles; Kenny Wheeler’s big band playing a rare london concert with yet more Wheeler music played by the Royal academy of Music Big Band; the National Youth Jazz Orchestra plays a repertoire ranging from the tubby Hayes repertoire to the present day. and the story continues – new commissions from John Surman (with male voice choir) and Shabaka Hutchings (with the BBC Concert Orchestra) demonstrate how a fascination with a broader musical palette, shared by gwilym Simcock’s collaboration with the City of london Sinfonia; whilst Sid peacock’s Surge, tommy Evans’ leeds-based ensemble, and Ben Cottrell’s Beats & pieces reflect a creative response to the large jazz ensemble that is continually evolving.

Francesco Martinelli leading European lecturer, jazz critic and writer

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Joe Harriot by Val W

ilmer

(Inset) Kenny Wheeler Shabaka Hutchings by Emile Holba

london Jazz Festival

– the clubs

When Sonny Rollins plays at this year’s london Jazz Festival it will be some 47 years since his debut in the capital at his now legendary 1965 Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club residency, the same year it moved to Frith Street, from its original home in an unassuming Soho basement on gerrard Street. and while it’s remarkable that Sonny is still playing at an extraordinary level nearly five decades later, it’s equally incredible that such an iconic jazz club, which first opened in 1959, is also still going stronger than ever today. It’s testimony to Ronnie and his business partner pete King’s dream of bringing the excitement of New York’s 52nd Street to the heart of their native london, fuelled by a desire to bring US jazz stars to heart of london and forge their own brand of hard swinging Brit-bop, every night, in the most conducive surroundings possible. Of course Ronnie’s wasn’t alone, with the likes of the Flamingo, the New Downbeat Club and the progressive jazz shrine that was the Club Eleven, all springing up as post-war london learned how to swing.

What’s remarkable is that the legacy of these venues, and their ethos of presenting jazz in an intimate club surrounding, is in relatively rude health today. along with Ronnie’s, the city’s other main jazz clubs have also been around for a long time, with the Dean Street pizza Express Jazz Club first opening its doors in 1968, Chelsea’s 606 Club coming into existence in 1976 – and the Vortex in Dalston recently celebrated its 25th anniversary with over 1,000 people at a party in neighbouring gillett Square. Many more new and long-established venues have carried the flame for live jazz with equal dedication; be they the Bull’s Head in Barnes (london’s oldest established seven day a week jazz venue); Oliver’s in greenwich; Hideaway in Streatham; green Note in Camden; Café OtO in Dalston; Rich Mix in Shoreditch; or a plethora of one or two night venues throughout the city. there is also the Forge in Camden – is it a club? Is it a small concert hall – no matter...

When the london Jazz Festival began to take shape some two decades ago, part of the vision was to reflect the crucial role that the club circuit plays in the vital presence of jazz within the city. this network of dedicated spaces allows the jazz heart to beat throughout the year - whether providing an essential platform for london’s jazz community to maintain a

creative energy that is matched by only a few other cities on the planet; or enabling london audiences to hear some of the great figures in the international jazz community at close quarters – an essential but not exclusive alternative to the very different atmosphere of the concert hall.

as the biggest ever london Jazz Festival hits town it seemed appropriate to gather three of the capital’s brightest jazz talents – trumpeter Jay phelps, bassist Jasper Høiby and saxophonist adam Waldmann – to discuss and reflect on the vital role jazz clubs play in bringing musicians and audiences together, developing a sense of community and advancing the music. the clubs have certainly played a central role in moving the music forward. For trumpeter Jay phelps, arriving in london aged 17 from his native Canada, the buzzing Sunday afternoon jam sessions at the Jazz Café back in the early 2000s were a key entry point into the scene, as he explained: “that was where the tomorrow’s Warriors jam was on so that’s when Soweto Kinch and andrew McCormack were part of that group.” Danish-born bassist Jasper Høiby was also new in town then, and he witnessed a whole generation of emerging players there

too: “the jam sessions were a big thing for a lot of people because you had guys like tom Skinner, Dave Okumu, Nick Ramm, tom Herbert and Finn peters all coming through at that time.” “and that’s what Ronnie’s and Charlie Wright’s are doing now”, adds Jay. But as well as providing opportunities for musicians here to expand their horizons, the clubs can also give audiences the chance to hear new jazz talent from abroad – for example, it was the pizzaExpress Jazz Club that first brought ESt – not to mention Diana Krall and Norah Jones – to this country. the Vortex and Cafe OtO can tell similar stories, providing essential space for the movers and shakers of the music’s sharp end.

Unsurprisingly the club atmosphere is also conducive to musicians from different walks of the scene, both international and local, playing together and simply letting off steam. Recent impromptu appearances at the clubs include Stevie Wonder dropping in to play harmonica and piano on the late Show at Ronnie Scott’s and the irrepressible Wynton Marsalis blowing into Soho’s Spice of life for an after-hours jam session. So are there places people can go during the london Jazz Festival to catch some late night jazz jam action? “Charlie Wright’s has a late jam plus a bunch of great gigs during the festival that would be worth checking out” offers adam, “and at Ronnie’s there’ll be a jam happening every night”.

and it’s not just the musicians who get involved. Catching great club gigs also comes with some unusual added extras, like when the musicians themselves are hanging out before

or after the performance, often keen to soak up the atmosphere and gauge the crowd they are about to play to, or simply eating a pre-gig meal.

Jay rightly points out that different clubs attract different audiences – there’s a world of contrasting atmosphere between East london clubs such as Village Underground or XOYO or Rich Mix and the intimate, stripped-down spaces of the Vortex, or the more traditional jazz environment of Ronnie’s or pizza Express. But they’re all a vital part of the mix. and during the Festival, this is where you’ll find an extraordinary range of artists, up close and personal. Roaming around the programme, you’ll also find classic singers – Dee Dee Bridgewater, patti austin, Sheila Jordan...European noise/jazz – Synkoke, Electric Epic, trio VD... classic hard bop – Jim Mullen, Charles Mcpherson, Jeremy Monteiro... and a pile-up of the new kids on the Brit block – Roller trio, World Service project, golden age of Steam.

and that’s just the tip of a very considerable iceberg...

Mike Flynn Assistant Editor, Jazzwise

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Jasper Høiby and adam Waldmann by Cat Munroe

Neil Cowley by Emile Holba

Serious are the creative producers who dreamt up the Festival in the early nineties, and have developed it year by year ever since, working closely with artists, venues, funders, sponsors and other producers and partners. as director David Jones says, “Festivals make the blood run faster”, and the london Jazz Festival is an extraordinary catalyst for new ideas and new work. as an active member of the International Jazz Festival Organization and the Europe Jazz Network, Serious connect the UK scene to international partners and audiences. “International links are very important for the British jazz scene,” says director Claire Whitaker. “We like to stimulate musical meetings between British artists and their international counterparts and, with the British Council’s support, we are able to present the work of British artists to international producers, who can expand their reach across the world.” Outside the Festival, Serious produce hundreds of concerts each year. their associate producer role at the Barbican includes the Barbican Jazz concert series, bringing many of the world’s leading stars to a london audience, and in 2013 Serious will also be developing a jazz strand within the Rest Is Noise, the Southbank Centre’s contemporary music series.    artists are the centre of Serious’ world. Serious not only present a community of musicians, composers, arrangers and producers, but through their rights and management work they engage intensively with individuals, supporting careers and stimulating new commissions. their publishing company In all Seriousness represents some of the UK’s most exciting composers and encompasses a breadth of genres.   Serious consider the growth of young talent an important part of their work. take Five is a professional development scheme for UK-based jazz composer-performers, which is now reaching out, via take Five: Europe, to France, Holland, Norway and poland,while air time provides opportunities for artists based in Scotland and Move On Up is aimed at giving musicians working in african and Caribbean music the opportunity to develop their musical and business skills.    

 

learning and participation is a key element to Serious’ work and the people involved benefit from their relationship with world-class artists from the UK and beyond. Inspiring people of all ages, backgrounds and ability, Serious deliver programmes such as andy Sheppard’s Saxophone Massive – an extraordinary mass participation project for saxophonists of all ages and abilities that opened the Festival a few years ago, and has since been staged across Europe. they bring their hallmark high standards to these performances, giving the same care, support and quality to the work of non-professional performers as they do with professional artists. Our current learning programme in london ranges from developing singing in tower Hamlets secondary schools (with a performance in the london Jazz Festival) and delivering workshops in pupil referral units to develop students’ music-making, their communication and confidence. Year round, the Young & Serious scheme unshrouds the mysteries of the music industry for 17 to 25 year olds with talks, visits and opportunities to engage in Serious and the london Jazz Festival. Watch out for the Young & Serious produced event on 13 November in the Front Room at Queen Elizabeth Hall. (see p.15) Even for Serious, the last few months have been particularly prolific. By the time london won its bid to host the Olympic games in 2005, the seeds for Serious’ Bt River of Music had already been sown. Bt River of Music grew to become a cornerstone of the london 2012 Festival this summer and involved almost two thousand community participants nationwide in the build up. Featuring live music from all 205 Olympic countries – nearly a hundred different shows, many specially created – Bt River of Music culminated in a giant free festival in late July, the weekend before the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic games, at  six iconic sites along the thames from Battersea park to

Docklands, prompting the Daily Telegraph to say “From the standard of the food to the friendly security, flawless organisation and gorgeous sites, this was the best music festival I have ever been to in the Capital.” at the same time, the company produced Urban Classic, a project that brings urban artists together with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, in front of 10,000 people in Walthamstow, and delivered Youth Music Voices, a 100-strong national young people’s choir.   the heart of Serious is a collective and passionate one. “Serious started as a small producer and we followed our enthusiasms,” says David. “I love seeing everything come together, to say that’s how we reach out to young people to take part; that’s how we find new audiences; this is how those artists are doing something new.”  In 2013, there will be national tours by ludovico Einaudi, the Be good tanyas and Emily portman, Richard thompson and penguin Cafe, alongside a renewed emphasis on developing new artists. after the continuing association with gateshead International Jazz Festival next april and closer links with the Norfolk & Norwich Festival in May, Serious have a raft of new ideas in development for next summer, including programming love Supreme, a major new jazz festival which runs 5–7 July near glyndebourne lovesupremefestival.co.uk.

after Bt River of Music and the other highlights of Serious’ Olympic year, new opportunities are opening up – but the london Jazz Festival will always play a major role in the company’s life, with plans already well advanced for a special celebration of the Festival’s 21st birthday in its slightly later slot of 15–24 November 2013.

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SUppORtINg tHE lONDON JaZZ FEStIVal

a festival of this kind requires more than box office income alone. We relie on the support of a broad range of sponsors and partners to maintain and extend the reach and artistic ambitions of the festival. In 2013 the Festival’s ambitions are greater than ever before as we mark our landmark 21st anniversary. the Festival works with sponsors to provide creative solutions to business needs through sponsorship packages, hospitality opportunities and corporate social responsibility programmes. We actively encourage new partnerships of this kind.

Earlier this year Serious established Serious trust, a new registered charity (no. 114535) to extend Serious’ education programme, create more professional development opportunities for talented artists and to commission more new work from artists.

as an individual you can get closer to the Festival and transform our work with young people and artists by making a donation to Serious trust. If you are a UK taxpayer, Serious trust can claim an extra 25p on every £1 you give through the gift aid scheme. We are also delighted to have support from arts Council England’s Catalyst scheme, which means the value of your donation will be doubled. to find out more about what any donation can do and how to get involved, please contact katrina.duncan@serious.org.uk or diana.spiegelberg@serious.org.uk or phone +44 (0) 20 7324 1880.

Seriousproducers of the london Jazz Festival

Now in its twentieth year, the london Jazz Festival is established as a major international music event, firmly positioned as london’s most extensive city-wide music festival. “the continuing vision for the Festival was to draw together the elements of this richly diverse musical form – an essential part of london’s cultural map throughout the year – within the context of a ten day celebration that spreads to all corners of the city” comments John Cumming, one of the three directors of Serious.

(Clockwise from top left) Bt River of Music – Europe Stage by Andy Sheppard Bt River of Music – africa Stage by Rosie Reed Gold Nathaniel Facey by Emile Holba

C r o s s w o r daCROSS1. Bop anthem which encouraged the study of ornithology (3/4/3/4)6. Hint of a Newley-Bricusse conundrum, and a Mark Murphy turn (3) 9. The LJF opening night would not be the same without this guy (3/6)11. Holds the keys to Phronesis (3)12. This horny branch lad needs rearranging (9)13. A little of what Fats – and now Macca – would do before corresponding (3/5)16. Surname of a pianist beyond compare (6)18. This jazz singer’s indeed a real mother – of another jazz singer (3/3)20. A sporty MG for Murray’s Big Band (4/4)22. Empirical study helped this cat get started (3/6)23. Theme song of the ‘other’ Duke (5)24. When Bobby Watson is likely to hit the stage (1/1/1)25. Monk’s Ace Jig Ink needs rewriting (6/3)26. See (2) Down (3/2/5)28. Who stepped out a dream? (3)

DOWN1. This swinging drummer is all smiles – surname please (7)2. (and 26 Across) What Peggy Lee’s been asking you all this time (3/4)3. First name of the Soul man with jazzy first album, ‘Presenting…’ (5)4. Christened Woodrow, he was always ahead of the herd (6)5. Not one of Richard Rodgers’ jazziest, but what a start to the day… and the title (2/4/1)7. Mo’ better blues from this man (3)8. He may have been a Duke, but his surname was often overlooked (6)10. What an improviser needs when he or she runs dry (4)14. Start telling me why you can ‘weather the storm’, my love (3/3)15. Half of this vocal group from the 50s – what a range! (2)17. Julie London did this over you (3)18. Lordly bandleader who was rarely called Edward (4)19. World-beating trio whose career was stalled by tragedy in 2008 (1/1/1)21. Surname of the greatest president of all (5)23. Where Monk might have ended up if the Baroness hadn’t taken the rap (4)27. Miles and Monk both wrote tunes for this productive man (3)29. The kind of day that inspires Stan Getz balladry (5)30. At 47 years old, this youth ensemble is still swinging (4)31. An almost completely antiquated term, you ass (4)

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londonjazzfestival.org.uk

f R E E M U s I C D o w N l o A D s

As a special treatDecca is offering twofree tracks from this

year’s festival artists,Kurt Elling and

Natalie Duncan!To download visit

decca.com/londonjazz

s P E C I A l o f f E R s

This year the london jazz festival has teamed up with Company of Cooks and Concrete to bring you

some great discounts on beverages – perfect for some post-concert

drinks!

just present your valid ljf concert ticket of the night* at the bar and

receive:

10% discount on all drinksat Royal festival Hall Bars

(post-show only)

2 for 1 happy hour pricesat Concrete

(get the same drink for free on selected drinks, post-show only) last orders at

Concrete: Thursday – 11.30pm, friday and saturday – 00.30am

*These offers only apply to Royal festival Hall, Queen

Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room bookers

Win two tickets to a trio of Serious concerts of your choice throughout 2013! To be in with a chance of winning, allyou need to do is answer this question:What anniversary does the london Jazz Festival celebrate next year?

a) 20th b) 21st c) 25th please email your answer to serious.competitions@gmail.com terms & ConditionsEntrant(s) must be aged 18 or over and be resident in the UK.prizes tickets are subject to concert availability and the prize suppliers’ terms and conditions. prize tickets will not be transferable to another person and no cash or other alternatives will be offered.By entering this competition you agree to be added to the Serious/London Jazz Festival e-newsletter subscribers list.

Competition

Crossword Master:alex Webb

For answers please visit

londonjazzfestival.org.uk/news

Serious Claire Whitaker DirectorDavid Jones DirectorJohn Cumming Director

amy Dickenson Developmentamy Forshaw Communicationsamy pearce Associate Director of productionClaire Furlong LearningClaire Watson DevelopmentDiana Spiegelberg Associate Director of Development & LearningEmma Kavanagh FinanceFreda Knowles productionHolly Ulph DevelopmentJayne gross Senior Communications ManagerJonathan potard production ManagerKatie Baldwin CommunicationsKatrina Duncan Associate Director of Learning & DevelopmentKurn luu Finance ManagerMartel Ollerenshaw Associate Director of Artists & Rights ManagementMichelle Cremin DevelopmentNadine Wood Learning ManagerOpe Igbinyemi Associate Director of FinanceSophie Hewlett production

Festival team amy Coombe, Caroline Humphries Communications, Holly goodfellow, Suzie Curtis production, louise Jones Development

adam King, alastair pickard, Ben axstell, Ben Spencer, Carlos Boix, Dan adams, Dylan Bate, Hal Hutchison, Janet Marshall, Jean Berthon, Jude Bowdler, louise Byrne, Mark Browning, Natalie Maddix, Steph thom, Steve Barrett, Suzi green, theuns, tim Hand, Will Fowler, laura Fensome, amy Sibley allen, liz Campbell, lula, Rachel Millar, talita Jenman, trish Brown Show Managers & Artist Liaison a special thanks to our press team Sally Reeves and Four Communications

all our brilliant volunteers who are working with us on the Festival

John Fordham (JF) and Rosie Hanley (RH)programme writers

iwantdesign.co.uk Graphic design

Dave Deller, Nigel green, Mike McCarthy, Simon Dodd, adam Ball, Jules McBride, phil Egan, Fred.E Kwafo Transport

RNSS SoundJohn Henry’s BacklineShow & Event Securitytiger tours, Studio Moves Splitter Vans

arts Council England

arts Council England is proud to have supported the Festival since it began in 1992. Since then we have seen it go from strength to strength – bringing more top quality artists to even larger audiences across London. This year’s Festival once again promises to be a spectacular celebration of jazz, and can only reinforce London’s status as one of the most culturally vibrant cities in the world.

Credits

Festival Supporters

39londonjazzfestival.org.uk

We would like to acknowledge the following organisations

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – take Five: Europe brings together partners across Europe

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – the london Jazz Festival is proud to be a member of the Europe Jazz Network

and the International Jazz Festivals Organization

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – the Festival is only possible as a result of the support of our many partners

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Our Official Drinks partners Our Official airline partner

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – In addition to the organisations listed above, we would also like to thank

the following for their support of performances in the Festival.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

the Festival is produced by

NOVEMBER 2012

5-9 In Tune, 4.30pm

Radio 3’s drivetime programme with guests drawn from

the artists appearing at the Festival.

9 Radio 3 Live in Concert, 7.30pm

Jazz Voice: Opening night jazz vocal extravaganza.

9 Jazz on 3, 11pm

Live from Ronnie Scott’s: Exclusive live performances

from some of the most sought-after acts at the Festival.

10 Jazz Record Requests, 5pm

Listeners’ requests for tracks by festival artists.

11 Jazz Line-Up, 11pm

Join Kevin Le Gendre for a special edition of Jazz Line-Up

from the Festival featuring interviews and performances

from some great artists such as Oddarang.

12 Jazz on 3, 11.00pm

Matthew Shipp Trio: Leading-edge contemporary jazz led

by one of New York’s most exciting pianists.

12-16 Composer of the Week, 12pm & 6.30pm

Donald Macleod explores the big band era through a host

of different arrangers and bandleaders.

13 Radio 3 Live in Concert, 7.30pm

BBC Concert Orchestra with Shabaka Hutchings

(BBC Radio 3 New Generation Jazz Artist).

17 Jazz Record Requests, 5pm

Listeners’ requests for tracks by festival artists.

18 World Routes, 10pm

Lucy Duran presents a concert with young Portuguese

Fado singer Carminho.

18 Jazz Line-Up, 11pm

Join Claire Martin for a special edition of Jazz Line-Up

from the London Jazz Festival, featuring interviews and

performances from top fl ight artists including Stonephace

Stabbins with Zoe Rahman.

19 Jazz on 3, 11pm

Jack DeJohnette in a special concert to celebrate the

legendary drummer’s 70th birthday.

23 World on 3, 11pm

Ara Dinkjan in session.

25 Jazz Line-Up, 11pm

Graham Collier Tribute with the BBC Big Band and special

guests conducted by Geoff Warren. 2012 would have marked

the 75th birthday of the British bandleader and musician.

26 Jazz on 3, 11pm

Jez Nelson hosts an edition of his legendary monthly

concert series Jazz In The Round featuring an eclectic

line-up of musicians.

DECEMBER 2012

2 Live to Europe, 11.15pm

A Jazz Line-Up showcase of British talent including Iain

Ballamy’s Anorak and Roberto Mitchell’s Panacea going

out live to Europe.

3 Jazz on 3, 11pm

Adventures in Sound: A series of exciting new collaborations,

curated by Jazz On 3. Expect the unexpected.

10 Jazz on 3, 11pm

Jez Nelson presents a new commission by veteran French

composer and double bassist Henri Texier.

30 Jazz Line-Up, 11pm

Neil Cowley Trio with the Goldsmiths (Big) Strings:

The hi-energy pianist and his trio are joined by a 30

piece string section.

30 The Choir, 5pm

A major new work for men’s chorus by John Surman,

commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and the Huddersfi eld

Contemporary Music Festival.

JANUARY 2013

6 Jazz Line-Up, 11pm

Kurt Elling & Sheila Jordan: A very special concert recording

from two of the leading jazz singers in the world.

27 Jazz Line-Up, 11pm

Chick Corea, Brian Blade & Christian McBride: Three of

the world’s most inventive jazz musicians come together

for what promises to be a very special concert.

Broadcast diarybbc.co.uk/radio3

Find out more and listen in HD sound at bbc.co.uk/radio3

guests conducted by Geoff Warren. 2012 would have marked

the 75th birthday of the British bandleader and musician.

Jez Nelson hosts an edition of his legendary monthly

concert series Jazz In The Round featuring an eclectic

JANUARY 2013

6 Jazz Line-Up, 11pm

Kurt Elling & Sheila Jordan: A very special concert recording

from two of the leading jazz singers in the world.

27 Jazz Line-Up, 11pm

Chick Corea, Brian Blade & Christian McBride: Three of

the world’s most inventive jazz musicians come together

for what promises to be a very special concert.Find out more and listen in HD sound at bbc.co.uk/radio3

Ahmad JamalFri 8 Feb 7.30pmThe master jazz pianist presents his new album Blue Moon accompanied by a stellar quartet, featuring Reginald Veal (bass), the brilliant New Orleans drummer Herlin Riley and percussionist Manolo Badrena

Barbican Members enjoy priority booking, 20% off * selected events for them and a guest, and much more.

0845 120 7508 barbican.org.uk

Bobby McFerrinSun 3 Mar 3pm & 7.30pmBobby McFerrin’s extraordinary voice and charismatic stage presence takes a new path. For the first time in many years, he plays with a specially picked band and presents his new album, SpiritYouAll – a full flavoured mix of blues, soul and gospel music and a soulful evocation of the American spiritual

The City of London Corporation is the founder and principal funder of the Barbican Centre

* Discounts are limited and subject to availability