Surman’s fourth solo album breaks no new ground but confirms his stature as one of today’s finest improvisers and arrangers, Surman overdubbing his own instrumental lines into position as if fronting ...

Fifty years ago Michael Shera thought the centrepiece of Ellington's civil rights project 'pretentious and pompous'. First published in Jazz Journal January 1971 ...

With this album, Weather Report restore interest and credibility. Past efforts have been guilty of all manner of vapid redundancy, but this has rich content, imagination, fire and passion. A shift of ...

Features Back Door – bless their old boots /1 Colin Hodgkinson tells the story of one of the UK's most creative grassroots jazz-rock bands, as well as delivering first-hand insights into the British ...

All the previous Matchbox Bluesmaster sets have concentrated on pre-war recordings (studio and field) made in the USA, but the series now turns its attention to the British blues scene of the mid-60s ...

Keyboard player, composer and producer Jeff Lorber first emerged on the scene fresh from Berklee in the mid-1970s, swiftly formed a band and released his first album, Jeff Lorber Fusion in 1977. The ...

As New Grove insightfully comments, Charles McPherson is one of the most inventive bebop altoists, whose fluid melodic style reflects the initial influence of Johnny Hodges. Reverence is McPherson’s ...