2016

Some combinations of musicians are very listenable, while others leave you with euphoria and a feeling that you want more. Such is the combination of…

Put five musicians together. The leader is a classically trained trombonist and the remainder of Friday’s band were all professional musicians involved in wide range…

There must be a situation when four musicians who have not played together as a quartet meet up for an evening of jazz. When they…

Julian Marc Stringle is a master of both the clarinet and saxophone. He is personable, humorous and above all, musically passionate about the jazz he…

Laura Collins has a vocal background of church music, but she slipped out of her cassock and donned a dress to move her music from…

It’s good to hear jazz from, say, a saxophone player, a pianist, a trumpet or trombone. Together with a good rhythm section and collective thinking…

This session was yet another example of what David Newton does and does so well. It was an evening of mainly well known music but…

Hearing the name Zoltan Sagi means you are going to be part of an evening of music designed to press all your jazz buttons. This…

The phrase ‘great American songbook’ can conjure feelings of sameness. The same tunes played in the same way by the same artists. This is where…

Jazz musicians will say that the smaller the group, the less places there are to hide if the standard is not high. So when it…

Perhaps the words ‘melody’ or ‘melodic’ are regarded as old fashioned by some jazz lovers, but this Friday session at the Portbello was full of…