British jazz talent makes waves with Zara McFarlane, Polar Bear and Sarah Gillespie, and this month sees big-name gatherings to savour in Bristol and London of jazz's most exciting talents
*Zara McFarlane has a touch of Nina's fire about her*
On a starry tribute to Nina Simone in London a few years ago, the late diva's daughter told the crowd that her mother had never realised how much she was loved. Anyone who ever saw Simone in close-up performance (she was a regular visitor to Ronnie Scott's in the mid-1980s) had a glimpse of what that meant, a sense that the devotion of fans on even the most stirring performances was an offering she didn't entirely trust. But this unique artist's ambivalence about audiences just upped the intensity. You could grow accustomed to the changing weather of her shows, the speed with which Simone's rare smiles would change to withering stares, the drama with which firestorms of gospel-driven sermonising or pleas for racial justice would burst out of passages of deceptive indolence. In the fierce beauty of her tone and the crackling precision of her phrasing she seemed to be communicating with a congregation beyond the crowd, maybe one with the power to secure lasting peace for her fellow African-Americans, and by that means for her own turbulent self.
Simone once said: "Music is a gift and a burden I've had since I can remember who I was", and for Britain's Zara McFarlane – the talented singer and Simone devotee whose star is rising fast – it almost certainly feels like only a gift right now. McFarlane, who won praise handling Simone's songs alongside American star Gregory Porter on a 2012 tribute in the Netherlands, has been touring originals and a few covers from If You Knew Her, her second album for DJ Gilles Peterson's Brownswood label. In her confiding ease and amiability with audiences, McFarlane is a very different artist to Simone – but in the ways she holds attention on the quietest songs, savours lyrics, is inspired by gospel music and the blues, and makes other people's songs her own, she's a worthy recruit to the legend's descendants. McFarlane has blossomed as a songwriter, but also made spontaneous conversations with a very good jazz band (sometimes operating in a tenaciously Pharoah Sanders-like manner, sometimes in quiet one-to-ones), central to her current work. Apologies, incidentally, to Zara and to readers for taking her cover of the Junior Murvin/Lee "Scratch" Perry song Police and Thieves as an original, but here's another fine McFarlane interpretation of a Simone vehicle from the 1950s, Plain Gold Ring.
Reading on mobile? Hear Zara McFarlane sing Plain Gold Ring here
*The Polar Bear single*
Polar Bear, the British band that has refined hipness to ever more understated feints and weaves since its inception in 2004, have a new album due on 24 March which they are promoting with a nationwide tour starting at Manchester's Band on the Wall. They previewed some of this material at London's Bishopsgate Institute on a gig of typically elliptical intrigue last October, though founding drummer/producer Seb Rochford told me this week that the band was nervous on that night to be departing so far from the music of the previous album, Peepers "but now we've relaxed, so it's got a lot freer".
The prolific and imaginative Rochford loves situations he hasn't been in before (last year he released a new song every month with guests from very different walks of musical life) and for In Each and Every One his instinctive decisions included banishing the usually pivotal ride cymbal from his drumkit, giving the recording engineer carte blanche to add whatever noises he liked. "I tend to feel an atmosphere, sometimes an impression of colours, about new music first," Rochford says. "With this, I had the feeling of a mist, and the music would come in and out of it. Then various things came together by chance. John (Leafcutter John, Polar Bear's laptop player and sporadic guitarist) wanted to have more of an electronic presence and play less guitar, and other members of the band were using more electronics, too. I also gave the engineer his own channel and told him to do anything he wanted with it as the music was played, as long as I couldn't hear him myself – so when it came to mixing, I found there were a lot of amazing extra noises that were a complete surprise to me."
Don't the tunes on In Each And Every One also feel even more pared-down than before? "I'm interested in how much melodic information you really need to stay with the piece of music," Rochford says, "but I still love melody. I've discovered the singer Angel Olsen lately, and I've listened to more Duke Ellington and John Coltrane in the past year than I have for ages. With Polar Bear, we all feel it's important not to just repeat something you've already done."
Here's a sample of what he means – Polar Bear's new single Be Free, from In Each And Every One:
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen to Polar Bear
*The Air Sessions at Kings Place*
On 15 March, the Air Artist Agency presents an all-star cast of its most jazz-oriented creators over three themed nights at London's Kings Place. Former EST drummer Magnus Öström, the cutting-edge Troyka electronic trio with pianist Kit Downes, guitarist Chris Montague and drummer Joshua Blackmore, singer/songwriter Julia Biel, young Norwegian sax star Marius Neset, and the much-feted German pianist Michael Wollny are among the big attractions, and the vocal-themed opening night presents rising star Anthony Strong on a double-bill with the subtle and eclectic singer-songwriter Julia Biel. Visions, on 14 March, presents Troyka and Magnus Öström's rich-textured fusion-meets-prog-rock group. The sessions close with Duets, showcasing the versatility of the astonishing Michael Wollny, presenting him in dialogues with Öström, saxophonist Marius Neset, harpsichordist Tamar Halperin, and tuba virtuoso Daniel Herskedal.
Here are Halperin and Wollny performing at Jazz Baltica in 2010:
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen to Halperin and Wollny
*Sarah Gillespie celebrates Bessie Smith*
British-American singer-songwriter Sarah Gillespie isn't just a powerful amalgam of influences including Bob Dylan and Tom Waits (with an occasional diversion into sounding like Edith Piaf in a bluegrass band), she's a socially sensitive performer who writes pungently telling lyrics and has the rare knack of making politics and music sound as if they belong together. She's the diametric opposite of the 21st-century hypercool jazz singer and she doesn't keep her emotions on the back burner.
In this respect, she has plenty in common with the founding heroine of blues and folk-rooted vocals over the past century, "Empress of the Blues" Bessie Smith. Smith was one of Sarah Gillespie's earliest models, and she's the subject of Gillespie's tribute show in the Jazz Interpretations series at London's Pizza Express Jazz Club on 10 March, with a specially-assembled quartet including pianist Kit Downes and surprise guests yet to be announced. Gillespie's realism, passionate energy, wry wit and insight into the personal and social challenges Smith faced in the 1920s and 30s make her an appropriate torch-bearer for the legendary singer's legacy.
And here's a famous example of Smith's power, which even stone-age recording technology didn't obscure, on her first hit, Gulf Coast Blues, with Clarence Williams at the piano:
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen to Bessie Smith singing Gulf Coast Blues
*And also in March…*
The weekend of 7-9 March sees Bristol's second jazz festival featuring one of the city's best-known saxophonists – Andy Sheppard, a patron of the event appearing in various settings through the weekend, including a reunion with a regular guitar partner, the excellent John Parricelli. Legendary Meters and Allen Toussaint drummer Zigaboo Modeliste also appears at Bristol with his Big Chiefs on a New Orleans-devoted show (they also play Ronnie Scott's on 9 March), and locals Get The Blessing also make a stopover on their home patch. The popular, atmospheric, and subtly funky Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen and his quartet tour from 7 March, and Robert Glasper, one of the world's most creative practitioners of a genuine jazz improv and hip-hop fusion, shifts up another venue-size to the Hammersmith Apollo with a raft of special guests on 12 March, a precursor to his Experiment project's UK tour in April. Here's that innovative band with Erykah Badu guesting on vocals, on the iconic Afro Blue, from the 2012 album Black Radio.
Reading on mobile? Here Afro Blue by Robert Glasper Experiment ft Erykah Badu here Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 hour ago.
*Zara McFarlane has a touch of Nina's fire about her*
On a starry tribute to Nina Simone in London a few years ago, the late diva's daughter told the crowd that her mother had never realised how much she was loved. Anyone who ever saw Simone in close-up performance (she was a regular visitor to Ronnie Scott's in the mid-1980s) had a glimpse of what that meant, a sense that the devotion of fans on even the most stirring performances was an offering she didn't entirely trust. But this unique artist's ambivalence about audiences just upped the intensity. You could grow accustomed to the changing weather of her shows, the speed with which Simone's rare smiles would change to withering stares, the drama with which firestorms of gospel-driven sermonising or pleas for racial justice would burst out of passages of deceptive indolence. In the fierce beauty of her tone and the crackling precision of her phrasing she seemed to be communicating with a congregation beyond the crowd, maybe one with the power to secure lasting peace for her fellow African-Americans, and by that means for her own turbulent self.
Simone once said: "Music is a gift and a burden I've had since I can remember who I was", and for Britain's Zara McFarlane – the talented singer and Simone devotee whose star is rising fast – it almost certainly feels like only a gift right now. McFarlane, who won praise handling Simone's songs alongside American star Gregory Porter on a 2012 tribute in the Netherlands, has been touring originals and a few covers from If You Knew Her, her second album for DJ Gilles Peterson's Brownswood label. In her confiding ease and amiability with audiences, McFarlane is a very different artist to Simone – but in the ways she holds attention on the quietest songs, savours lyrics, is inspired by gospel music and the blues, and makes other people's songs her own, she's a worthy recruit to the legend's descendants. McFarlane has blossomed as a songwriter, but also made spontaneous conversations with a very good jazz band (sometimes operating in a tenaciously Pharoah Sanders-like manner, sometimes in quiet one-to-ones), central to her current work. Apologies, incidentally, to Zara and to readers for taking her cover of the Junior Murvin/Lee "Scratch" Perry song Police and Thieves as an original, but here's another fine McFarlane interpretation of a Simone vehicle from the 1950s, Plain Gold Ring.
Reading on mobile? Hear Zara McFarlane sing Plain Gold Ring here
*The Polar Bear single*
Polar Bear, the British band that has refined hipness to ever more understated feints and weaves since its inception in 2004, have a new album due on 24 March which they are promoting with a nationwide tour starting at Manchester's Band on the Wall. They previewed some of this material at London's Bishopsgate Institute on a gig of typically elliptical intrigue last October, though founding drummer/producer Seb Rochford told me this week that the band was nervous on that night to be departing so far from the music of the previous album, Peepers "but now we've relaxed, so it's got a lot freer".
The prolific and imaginative Rochford loves situations he hasn't been in before (last year he released a new song every month with guests from very different walks of musical life) and for In Each and Every One his instinctive decisions included banishing the usually pivotal ride cymbal from his drumkit, giving the recording engineer carte blanche to add whatever noises he liked. "I tend to feel an atmosphere, sometimes an impression of colours, about new music first," Rochford says. "With this, I had the feeling of a mist, and the music would come in and out of it. Then various things came together by chance. John (Leafcutter John, Polar Bear's laptop player and sporadic guitarist) wanted to have more of an electronic presence and play less guitar, and other members of the band were using more electronics, too. I also gave the engineer his own channel and told him to do anything he wanted with it as the music was played, as long as I couldn't hear him myself – so when it came to mixing, I found there were a lot of amazing extra noises that were a complete surprise to me."
Don't the tunes on In Each And Every One also feel even more pared-down than before? "I'm interested in how much melodic information you really need to stay with the piece of music," Rochford says, "but I still love melody. I've discovered the singer Angel Olsen lately, and I've listened to more Duke Ellington and John Coltrane in the past year than I have for ages. With Polar Bear, we all feel it's important not to just repeat something you've already done."
Here's a sample of what he means – Polar Bear's new single Be Free, from In Each And Every One:
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen to Polar Bear
*The Air Sessions at Kings Place*
On 15 March, the Air Artist Agency presents an all-star cast of its most jazz-oriented creators over three themed nights at London's Kings Place. Former EST drummer Magnus Öström, the cutting-edge Troyka electronic trio with pianist Kit Downes, guitarist Chris Montague and drummer Joshua Blackmore, singer/songwriter Julia Biel, young Norwegian sax star Marius Neset, and the much-feted German pianist Michael Wollny are among the big attractions, and the vocal-themed opening night presents rising star Anthony Strong on a double-bill with the subtle and eclectic singer-songwriter Julia Biel. Visions, on 14 March, presents Troyka and Magnus Öström's rich-textured fusion-meets-prog-rock group. The sessions close with Duets, showcasing the versatility of the astonishing Michael Wollny, presenting him in dialogues with Öström, saxophonist Marius Neset, harpsichordist Tamar Halperin, and tuba virtuoso Daniel Herskedal.
Here are Halperin and Wollny performing at Jazz Baltica in 2010:
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen to Halperin and Wollny
*Sarah Gillespie celebrates Bessie Smith*
British-American singer-songwriter Sarah Gillespie isn't just a powerful amalgam of influences including Bob Dylan and Tom Waits (with an occasional diversion into sounding like Edith Piaf in a bluegrass band), she's a socially sensitive performer who writes pungently telling lyrics and has the rare knack of making politics and music sound as if they belong together. She's the diametric opposite of the 21st-century hypercool jazz singer and she doesn't keep her emotions on the back burner.
In this respect, she has plenty in common with the founding heroine of blues and folk-rooted vocals over the past century, "Empress of the Blues" Bessie Smith. Smith was one of Sarah Gillespie's earliest models, and she's the subject of Gillespie's tribute show in the Jazz Interpretations series at London's Pizza Express Jazz Club on 10 March, with a specially-assembled quartet including pianist Kit Downes and surprise guests yet to be announced. Gillespie's realism, passionate energy, wry wit and insight into the personal and social challenges Smith faced in the 1920s and 30s make her an appropriate torch-bearer for the legendary singer's legacy.
And here's a famous example of Smith's power, which even stone-age recording technology didn't obscure, on her first hit, Gulf Coast Blues, with Clarence Williams at the piano:
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen to Bessie Smith singing Gulf Coast Blues
*And also in March…*
The weekend of 7-9 March sees Bristol's second jazz festival featuring one of the city's best-known saxophonists – Andy Sheppard, a patron of the event appearing in various settings through the weekend, including a reunion with a regular guitar partner, the excellent John Parricelli. Legendary Meters and Allen Toussaint drummer Zigaboo Modeliste also appears at Bristol with his Big Chiefs on a New Orleans-devoted show (they also play Ronnie Scott's on 9 March), and locals Get The Blessing also make a stopover on their home patch. The popular, atmospheric, and subtly funky Norwegian pianist Tord Gustavsen and his quartet tour from 7 March, and Robert Glasper, one of the world's most creative practitioners of a genuine jazz improv and hip-hop fusion, shifts up another venue-size to the Hammersmith Apollo with a raft of special guests on 12 March, a precursor to his Experiment project's UK tour in April. Here's that innovative band with Erykah Badu guesting on vocals, on the iconic Afro Blue, from the 2012 album Black Radio.
Reading on mobile? Here Afro Blue by Robert Glasper Experiment ft Erykah Badu here Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 hour ago.