tue 08/07/2025

jazz

Max Raabe, Palast-Orchester, Cadogan Hall review - escapism with irony

Escapism sometimes feels not just useful but necessary. To be carried back, for an evening, to the world of the 1920s/1930s dance band, with foxtrots, pasodobles, crisp starched collars and secco endings, of slick hair and even slicker arrangements...

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Album: Sergio Mendes - In the Key of Joy

Released to coincide with a new documentary on his life by filmmaker John Scheinfeld, In the Key of Joy celebrates the multifaceted genius of Brazilian producer, composer, keyboardist and vocalist, Sergio Mendes.Recorded between Brazil and...

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Album: Pat Metheny – From This Place

From This Place (Nonesuch) is a complex, meticulously produced and many-layered album which demands concentrated and repeated listening. In many ways, it is all the better for it. Pat Metheny himself has written an essay or “Album Notes” of no...

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Album: Huey Lewis and the News - Weather

Huey Lewis and the News were an unlikely mid-Eighties phenomenon. Their Sports album was a mega-success for a band already approaching early middle age. Their Fifties feel, given a contemporary polish and boosted by association with cinematic...

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Rags: The Musical, Park Theatre review - a timely, if predictable, immigrant tale

“Take our country back!” is the rallying cry of the self-identified “real” Americans gathered to protest the arrival of immigrants. It could be a contemporary Trump rally – or, indeed, the nastier side of current British political discourse – but in...

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theartsdesk in Brussels - jazz, openness and youth at the start of the cultural year

“Brussels – The Cultural Guide” for 2020 is a very substantial book. It consists of 212 tightly-packed pages in a quite small font. The message is that there is indeed a lot going on culturally in Belgium’s capital city.Whereas the separatist-led...

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Albums of the Year 2019: Claire Martin - Believin’ It

A trio of standout US vocal jazz releases included one of the year’s most hotly anticipated albums, Jazzmeia Horn’s Love and Liberation, which showcased the Dallas-born vocalist’s ever-deepening artistry and songwriter’s ear for detail. Horn’s eight...

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Albums of the Year 2019: Mark Turner Meets Gary Foster

As the attention-jostling hype becomes ever more unashamed, we get further from the music. The myths and the 'message' get louder, to the point where the question of whether the music itself might actually be worth hearing can become secondary. I've...

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CD: Gang Starr - One of the Best Yet

Before the days of stardom on Jay-Z and Kanye’s scale, before Brooklyn became a millionaire’s playground, Gang Starr were deeply influential in hip hop and became pioneers of jazz rap. However, Guru disassociated himself from long-term partner DJ...

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10 Questions for Techno Musician Carl Craig

In the eight years since theartsdesk last spoke to Carl Craig, a lot has happened. He moved from his native Detroit for a sojourn in Barcelona (partly for ease of access to his summer DJ residencies in Ibiza), then recently returned. He's reinvented...

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Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi review, Royal Festival Hall - musical togetherness

Leonard Bernstein talked about “the infinite variety of music” and the late maestro would have been thrilled by the variety on display at the Royal Festival Hall where Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi were as exciting and exhilarating as...

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CD: Simon Thacker's Ritmata - Tàradh

Composer, classical guitarist and ensemble leader Simon Thacker has spent the past decade immersed in distinct musical cultures; from the reinterpretations and reimaginings of the musical traditions of eastern Europe and the Roma people that...

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