Mostly music

I’ve just been listening to Alan Ferber’s new recording ’Chamber Songs’ , which features his nonet with the addition of a string group. I al...

I just saw where Ethan Iverson - without doubt the most respected jazz blogger around (at least as far as writing about the actual music is ...

In the previous post on Denny Zeitlin, I questioned whether anyone apart from Denny had ever really scaled the jazz heights as a player des...

(Since I wrote this post I receieved some factual corrections, observations and clarifications from Denny - I've added these in an adden...

Jazz has never been big on child prodigies. Unlike classical music, there have been very few bona-fide child prodigies in the music, or at l...

Here's a 2nd video taken at the recent IRSA meeting at Newpark, in case you might like to have a look

In 2007 a casual lunch gave rise to something that culminated recently in twenty seven great musicians from all around the world coming toge...

For various reasons I’ve been listening to lots of concerts by very good young musicians recently – mostly performance exams at my school an...

Too often in jazz and improvised music we just take the cheap and cheerful route regarding using the drummer as a soloist in our composition...

Jason Marsalis' recent well publicised rant on Youtube concerning what he sees as the preponderance of 'jazz nerds' destroying ...

Time was in jazz when 3/4 seemed exotic.......... It’s not that long ago since jazz musicians didn’t play in 3/4 at all, or rarely. Charlie ...

Spent yesterday in the studio with my new improvising chamber trio Trilogue.This is a relatively new group but one that's already real f...