Music, Classical and Kenny Mathieson

Mr McFall's Chamber - Birds & Beasts

4 May 2010

(Delphian Records) A quintet of classical string players both thinking and playing out of the box, a jazz pianist and two drummers, and a piper with both folk and jazz leanings – it can only be Mr McFall’s. The music is equally eclectic – two…

Fringe Magnetic - Empty Spaces

27 Jan 2010

(Loop Records) Fringe Magnetic is an eclectic project even by the Loop Collective’s famously open-ended standards. The nine-piece band had its origins in a commission from University College London in 2006 allowing trumpeter and composer Rory Simmons…

Huw Warren - Hermeto +

13 Nov 2009

(Basho Records) Welsh pianist Huw Warren is one of the most consistently intriguing and persistently undervalued musicians on the UK scene. Whether leading his own imaginative projects, co-founding Perfect Houseplants or working with musicians from…

Music from the Penguin Cafe

Revisiting a musical phenomenon

6 Aug 2009

The death of Simon Jeffes in 1997 seemed to bring an end to the intriguing story of the Penguin Café Orchestra. Jeffes had founded the group in the early 70s as a vehicle for his musical concept, which – as he told me when I interviewed him in 1994…

National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland

9 Jul 2009

Guitarist Mike Walker will join the National Youth Jazz Orchestra of Scotland on this three-date tour, which will feature a full performance of his long-awaited debut album, Madhouse & The Whole Thing Here, released earlier this year. It will be a…

SNJO: Rhapsody in Blue Live

9 Jul 2009

It has been a source of regret that so little of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra’s mighty achievements of the past decade and more have made it onto commercial CD release. This is only the second disc they have been able to issue (although Tommy…

Celtic Connections - Michael Nyman

22 Jan 2009

CELTIC CONNECTIONS Despite his ongoing frustration at being shunned by the BBC Proms, Michael Nyman remains the most widely heard of contemporary ‘serious’ composers in the UK. An early experimentalist in the 60s avant-garde, Nyman is one of the very…

Celtic Connections - Béla Fleck

8 Jan 2009

What’s in a name? In the case of Celtic Connections, not much, or at least, nothing too literal. Anyone who insisted on the strict application of the name would have found themselves left well behind almost from the launch of the festival back in 1994.

Conflict and Resolution

8 Jan 2009

CELTIC CONNECTIONS The life of Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh will be celebrated in unusual fashion in this concert featuring a specially commissioned new work for musicians from Scotland and Catalonia, with the BBC…

Hebrides Ensemble - Olivier Messiaen – Chamber Works

3 Jul 2008

CLASSICAL (Linn Records) The Hebrides Ensemble are now firmly established as Scotland’s leading contemporary music group, and their stock is rising well beyond their native turf as well. The enthusiastic acclaim for their recent imaginative Wigmore…

London & Glasgow Improvisers Orchestras - Separately & Together

10 Apr 2008

JAZZ (Emanem Records) For reasons both practical and aesthetic large ensembles have been the exception rather than the rule in the world of free improvisation. Both the London and the rather younger Glasgow Improvisers Orchestras have happily flown in…

The Teak Project

10 Apr 2008

JAZZ (First Hand Records) The Teak Project is a collaboration between sitar player Jonathan Mayer (son of Indo-jazz fusion pioneer John Mayer), guitarist Justin Quinn and tabla player Neil Craig. They describe the project as a collaboration of…

Trilok Gurtu

31 Jan 2008

CELTIC CONNECTIONS Trilok Gurtu may have begun his musical life in a family thoroughly steeped in the strict disciplines and formal cohesion of Indian classical music, but his own career has taken him into some of the most diverse world-jazz fusions…