Music, Jazz & Blues

Hitlist - The best rock, pop, jazz & folk

20 Sep 2007

• Dean Owens and the Whisky Hearts This masterful Edinburgh songwriter kicks of ten days of shows in Darvel with a full-blooded, full-band show of his beguiling Americana. Darvel Music Festival, Darvel Town Hall, near Kilmarnock, Wed 26 Sep. (Folk…

Maria Schneider Orchestra

20 Sep 2007

JAZZ Sky Blue (ArtistShare) Maria Schneider’s decision to take her CD releases out of the established distribution system and throw her lot in with ArtistShare paid rich dividends when her 2004 recording Concert in the Garden became the first disc…

Camille O’Sullivan

16 Aug 2007

5 words to describe your show Dark, edible, vulnerable, cheeky, flammable. 4 things that would be on your dream rider Nick Cave, Marmite, a winning lotto ticket, a handsome, pretty masseur. 3 things you’d like to get out of your visit to…

Mark O'Keeffe

Records

26 Apr 2007

CONTEMPORARY JAZZ The Edinburgh-based label is doing its fair share to support contemporary Scottish composition. The Edinburgh Quartet’s fine recent disc of new Scottish string quartets, The Cold Dancer, is followed by this solo outing from the BBC…

Various - Rough Trade Counter Culture 07

14 Feb 2008

EVERYTHING (Rough Trade) If anything can be gleaned from these expansive, annual compilations its this: try as you might you can’t keep up with all the fine new music around unless you actually run a record store. And while you might have…

Angelo Debarre Quartet - Live at Le Quecumbar London

31 Jan 2008

(Lejazztal) JAZZ French guitarist Angelo DeBarre is one of the artists appearing at the inaugural Fife Jazz Festival (see preview, page 79), and is no stranger to Scottish audiences. This set with his current band of UK-based musicians, guitarist…

Loz Speyer’s Time Zone

The Tolbooth, Stirling, Sat 5 May

23 Apr 2007

JAZZ London-based trumpeter Loz Speyer has been spending a lot of time in Cuba since he last toured Scotland, and that will be reflected in the music he will perform with Time Zone. This short Scottish tour (they also play Montrose and some Highland…

*Hitlist

Hitlist

9 Apr 2007

Mark Eitzel The erstwhile American Music Club lynchpin wears his heart on his sleeve and can write a love song that would break your heart clean open on one listen. Not a dry seat in the house guaranteed. Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Thu 19 Apr.

Acoustic Ladyland

Are you experienced?

9 Apr 2007

Acoustic Ladyland may have drawn their inspiration from music that first blasted ears four decades ago, but their scorching aural assault has broadened considerably from the quartet’s initial acerbic fusion of Jimi Hendrix, post-Coltrane free jazz and…

Quinn

3 Jan 2007

A beguiling mixture of indie, jazz rhythms and electronica, Quinn are essentially Louise Quinn on guitar and vocals and Bal Cooke on drums and computer. Quinn’s vocals make even the most downbeat trip hop tracks enticing. The duo have just recorded…

Barry Adamson

27 Mar 2008

Barry Adamson is making his pitch. The way the composer, crooner, ex-Magazine and Bad Seeds bassist and now big(ish) band leader tells it regarding his forthcoming eighth album, Back to the Cat, though, sounds like making movies. But then, the absorbed…

Fettes Jazz Festival

16 Aug 2007

The jazz weekend under canvas in the grounds of Fettes College has become a bit of a staple of the otherwise rather thin jazz representation in the Fringe, and all the more so with absence of a jazz programme at The Lot this year. That has left Bill…

Tony Monaco Trio

9 Aug 2007

Ohio-born Hammond organ star Tony Monaco started out on accordion as a kid, but was converted to the B3 when a heard a Jimmy Smith album as a youngster. It sparked a passion that ultimately took him onto the international festival circuit, while his…

Hitlist - The best rock, pop, jazz & folk

17 Jul 2007

• A Band Called Quinn, Maxi Geil! and Playcolt Glasgow’s very own up and coming indie kids Quinn are joined by Brooklyn’s finest arch-camp art-rockers Maxi Geil and Playcolt, who are playing in Scotland for the first time. Classic Grand, Glasgow, Tue 24…

Moishe's Bagel

Bongo Club, Edinburgh, Sat 7 Apr

27 Mar 2007

JAZZ As pianist Phil Alexander explained on the eve of the release of their second album , Salt, the band have relaxed into their trademark blend of jazz-influenced Klezmer and Balkan music since forming back in 2003. ‘Having started largely…

Records - Alison Burns

Alison Burns

27 Mar 2007

JAZZ Scottish singer Alison Burns concentrates on a programme of familiar standards for her debut album, including pleasing versions of ‘You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To’, ‘But Not For Me’, ‘Shadow of Your Smile’ and ‘The Way You Look Tonight’, as…

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…

Larry Coryell & Bombay Jazz

18 Oct 2007

JAZZ Tolbooth, Stirling, Sat 20 Oct This is the only Scottish date for a world-jazz quartet featuring the guitar work of Larry Coryell. It’s a rare Scottish outing for the American guitarist, who made his name in the first wave of jazz-rock fusion…

SNJO Plays Gershwin

4 Oct 2007

The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra premiered Tommy Smith’s sensational and much-expanded arrangement for jazz orchestra of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Brian Kellock as the piano soloist at the 2006 Edinburgh Jazz Festival, and this is a…

Charlie Hunter Trio

6 Sep 2007

JAZZ Guitarist Charlie Hunter changes tack with this trio outing, which moves even further into rock territory than its more funk-oriented recent predecessors, and consequently, further from Hunter’s earlier and more overtly ‘jazz’ work as well. The…

Raymond Macdonald & Günter ‘Baby’ Sommer

6 Sep 2007

JAZZ More recorded documentation from the undoubted leader of the Glasgow school of free improvisation, saxophonist Raymond MacDonald. Hard on the heels of the Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra’s latest opus, Falkirk (FMR), comes this collaboration with…

Valery Ponomarev

23 Aug 2007

Trumpeter Valery Ponomarev has been making regular visits to Scotland since the early 90s, usually at the behest of drummer and Jazz Bar owner Bill Kyle. I am among the many journalists and thousands of fans who have pinned him back and demanded to hear…

Dick Lee Septet

9 Aug 2007

Clarinetist Dick Lee is a regular at this venue, and leads his seven-piece expansion of Swing 2007, featuring a four-horn frontline in which he is joined by Anne Evans, Duncan Nairn and Martin Foster, a combination that gives him access to a wide…

BBC Big Band Play Atomic Basie

1 Aug 2007

Basie fans will need no nudging to spot the reference in the title of this Jazz Festival celebration of the great pianist and bandleader’s music. The Atomic Mr Basie was first issued in 1957, and remains one of the touchstone recordings in the…

Records - Fraud

3 Jul 2007

JAZZ Fraud are making considerable waves on the more experimental end of the London jazz scene at the moment, and have clearly won some influential backers, as this debut album was nominated for album of the year at the BBC Jazz Awards even before it…