On July 16th, 1976, the first North Sea Jazz Festival opened its doors at The Hague. It had six halls, 300 musicians, and an audience of about 9.000 visitors. Today, with the festival now based in Rotterdam, the 3-day event draws a crowd of about 90.000 visitors who can witness around 1.300 artists on 17…
Guitarist Julian Lage releases his fifth album for Blue Note Records, “Scenes From Above”, on January 23rd. After “Squint” (2021) with Jorge Roeder and Dave King, “Room With A View” (2022) with additional guitar from Bill Frisell, his solo album “The Layers” (2023), and “Speak To Me” (2024) with an extended band that featured Kris…
Flashback to 1982. When producers, writers, arrangers, and multi-instrumentalists Robson Jorge and Lincoln Olivetti started their solid partnership, writing songs for dozens of MPB artists during that era, they also received pretty critical reviews accusing them of turning the classic MPB sounds into lame and boring pop. Fast forward over 40 years, and all of…
Trumpeter Milena Casado, who released her debut album “Reflection Of Another Self” on Candid Records last May, is embarking on a tour through Europe this month. Milena, part of Terri Lyne Carrington’s group (Terri also produced her album), was playing her first headlining set a couple of years ago at the North Sea Jazz Festival,…
Two years after his acclaimed solo guitar album “Moondial”, Pat Metheny returns on February 27th with his new album “Side-Eye III+”, a new project with new, young band members Chris Fishman on keys and Joe Dyson on drums. At the same time, Pat also announces the launch of his new record label called Uniquity Music,…
We’ve always been a fan of British independent music label Far Out Recordings, set up in 1994 by Brazilian music enthusiast Joe Davis. The label specializes in quality Brazilian music and has released albums by Marcos Valle, Sabrina Malheiros, Bruno Berle, Joyce Moreno, Azymuth, Arthur Verocai, and so many more. In recent years, Far Out…
Happy new year everybody. We’re back after our holiday hiatus and just learned that several interesting projects are slated for release in the next few weeks. Blue Note recording artist, vibraphonist Joel Ross, returns on January 16th with “Gospel Music”, his fifth record for the label which also includes Josh Johnson on alto sax, Maria…
Pianist Aaron Parks, who released his latest Blue Note Records album “By All Means” at the beginning of November, played a short set on Thursday afternoon at the Jazz Social, the pop up venue which offers live performances, interviews, live radio, a record shop, and more during this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival. The record…
The Jazz Social, the EFG London Jazz Festival hangout just a few steps away from the Barbican, is now in its second year. This pop-up live venue, with live performances, one-off events, live radio broadcasts, interviews, and family-friendly events, and a specially curated Blue Note Records pop-up store, has proven to be a big success….
It was a Gondwana Records night on Tuesday at Hackney Church, the East London live venue which has hosted a lot of great artists in the past and which is one of the hosts of this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival. Gondwana Records, an independent label based in Manchester and founded by Matthew Halsall in…