latest member blog posts

John Petters has placed this obituary of George Webb on the BBC message boards, which may be of interest to LondonJazz readers.91 year old George Webb - known affectionately as the Father of British Traditional Jazz - died on Thursday.A tribute on Paul Barnes' BBC Radio Suffolk show is available on iPlayer HEREGeorge - a self taught pianist, fell in love with the classic jazz of Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver and put together the first traditional jazz revival band in the UK during the War.The George Webb Dixielanders studied then 20 year old rare 78 rpm recordings and s

OUT OF THEIR SHELL
Turtle Island String Quartet takes the art of improvisation to new heights with Coltrane concert
Friday, March 12, 2010
By Chris Waddington
Contributing writer
Can you snap your fingers and sway to a string quartet? Jazz purists and classical snobs used to laugh at the notion. Then, in 1985, the Turtle Island String Quartet began to [...]
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bingo hall  bingo cabin

Louis Andriessen article at the Detritus Review. Nice coincidence. Just heard a fascinating talk by Rob Zuidam on “The Five” ping.fm/guB4D
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Extensive review of the ECLAT festival in Stuttgart. Wish I could have gone! ping.fm/76cYQ
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Nik Bärtsch's Ronin(ICA, March 12th, 2010)"Ronin. That won't be your kind of thing at all, Seb" said a friend. Well, I survived a first hurdle. Interviewing Nik Bärtsch last month proved a really enjoyable experience. He's a fascinating man. But now it gets further from the comfort zone. Should I really still be venturing into pitch-dark venues with a light show where they hand-stamp you? At an age when the expression "hip joint" refers to something which might hurt at any minute? Surely all such attempts to fly in the face of nature must be doomed? I very much enjoyed this gig.

Eduardo Niebla(Queen Elizabeth Hall, March 12th, 2010. Review by Rod Fogg)Flamenco has, over the years, been fertile ground for fusionistas. Paco de Lucia kicked off Flamenco-jazz in 1979 with "The Guitar Trio" - a collaboration with Larry Coryell and John McLaughlin which occupied the artistic high ground. Popular, but less exalted, was Ottmar Liebert's cruise and groove Flamenco-meets-smooth chaff of the 1990s. Is this a good place to mention the Gypsy Kings? Probably not.

Videos are in and we’re all blown away by these amazing Ryan Leslie submissions!
Record producer, singer-songwriter, musician and entrepreneur Ryan Leslie recently invited Talenthouse musicians and aspiring producers to check out this video of Ryan working in the studio and then be as creative in making your own version with original music.
What was created by [...]
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The Patsy - new music by Gwyneth Herbert(Birds Eye View Festival, BFI South Bank- March 10th 2010, review by Alyn Shipton)A high point of the BFI’s annual women’s film festival, Birds Eye View, was a newly commissioned score for Marion Davies’ 1928 silent comedy classic "The Patsy", by the jazz vocalist and songwriter Gwyneth Herbert. Although Herbert made her name as a singer of jazz ballads and - on her latest CD All The Ghosts - performs strikingly original songs about London life, she chose to create a sound world that mainly used her voice as an instrumental colour.