Livemusic.fm Reviews 2009

A selection of reviews written for livemusic.fm

Rest In the Eye of the Hurricane Hicks and Guest @ Cavendish Arms, 04.03.2009

The intimate Cavendish Arms Ballroom, with it’s almost Baz Luhrmann inspired decor, quickly filled with an expectant audience who’d braved the council-estates towering over the insalubrious south London borough, to enjoy an evening of some unique and undiscovered talents of the singer-songwriter genre.

The evening kicked off with the extremely assured Alice Mclaughlin – standing just over 5 feet away in front of 40plus completely silent people on the tiny stage. However most were soon blown away by her breath-taking vocals and poignant song-writing, reminiscent of KT Tunstall or Cerys Matthews ( with the odd hint of Janis Joplin & even Bjork thrown in for good measure!) Good use of her vocal strength and interesting almost country-guitar rhythms were used to dazzling effect, and after her short set of half-a-dozen numbers or so, the crowd were well and truly won over – completely taken with her self-effacing between-songs banter and songs the quality ofTurn It Up. As one of the guys at my table said, the songs had that bitter-sweet-pop quality that reminded him of a female one-man-band version of Del Amitri. That might sound a difficult unison but believe me it wasn’t … check her out on MySpace:
Alice McLaughlin?http://www.myspace.com/alicemclaughlin

After 9pm, Ben Dixon and his muses, which have formed the core of his musical conscience since the late-90s, took to the stage in the guise of 5-piece Hicks. I’ve personally known Ben and at least two of his fellow musicians since the early 90’s, when they were all at college together in West London. They have continued, even if somewhat erratically, to produce quality, carefully-crafted songs that are reflective of a number of musical, literary and social influences.

Songs such as Cathedral Bells, Kingsize Blues, Mr Mole and Charlattans & Whores reflect the various talents of Dixon himself, guitarist Greg Simpson, and guitarist/backing vocalist Eddie Philp, drummer and fellow song-writer Guy Buss, and Bass player Phil Ansell.

Dixon has a vocal warmth and timbre reminiscent of a swathe of great British singer-songwriters; the one that kept coming to my mind was Martin Stephenson (of the Daintees)- but that might just have been because I was listening to a lot of MSD when I first met Ben back in the early 90s!! Equally retro were some of the lyrics which reminded me of a slightly self-absorbed beat-poet fused with either Morrissey or Matt Johnston (of The The). Again that might sound like a very old and hackneyed pastiche of 80s & 90s influences … but somehow Dixon and Co manage to inject contemporary relevance into each number – and the sound really is quite indefinable and timeless for all it’s influences.

Dixon also has all the charisma and assurance of a song-writer who has spent close to a decade performing in London venues. His rapport with the crowd, and his energy, were both infectious and endearing and by the time they launched into the final number – a song I’d first heard almost 10 years ago – Hicks had proved that their sheer spread of musical talent and song-writing back-catalogue could easily keep them playing another 10 years.

To paraphrase the closing song Hurricane, which sounded as fresh as it had the first time I’d heard it and I still whistled it all the way back home:
“I’ll take my time but I’ll get there anyway … I’ll rest in the eye of a hurricane til it carries me home”

Hicks on MySpace?http://www.myspace.com/hicksgb

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Musings of the Great British Singer-Songwriter Andy Sloman @ Bar Music Hall, 29.01.2009

Andy Sloman epitomizes the talent, craft and sublime skill of the great British singer songwriter – understated but remarkably versatile both in terms of vocal lines and the melodies of the music.

Sloman is part of the great heritage of talented English, Scots, Welsh & Irish muses, notably including the likes of David Grey, Damian Rice, Tom Baxter, Mike Scott & Kelly Jones. And of course, John Martyn – who sadly passed away on the 29th January, aged 60, after over 30 years of contributing unique songs to the great British songbook. Martyn, in my mind represented to the acoustic guitar what Hendrix was to electric – innovative, inventive and indefinable. Go down easy John & may you never …

Attending Andy Sloman’s gig was a fitting tribute to the memory of the Big Man, and reminded me that as one great muso lays his head down several others come forward to fill their place in the troubador ranks.

Sloman is certainly a possible candidate with his silky voice, understated guitar melodies, and his poignant lyrics. Most of the songs you only have to hear once to be hooked by their pleasing rhythms and subtle melodies. [see Andy’s page on LMFM here http://livemusic.fm/artist/andrewsloman ]

This was the first time I had seen Andy play live and he was breaking in a new bass player & drummer ( who were both incidentally superb) – next month Andy will play Underbelly with an extended band, including a 4-piece String section. On the strength of songs such as Wear Her Down and Back On My Feet I can only assume that that will be a breath-taking gig. As it was, the performance at the Shoreditch Music Hall was a virtuoso piece in itself; and, in my mind if he keeps going with the same momentum, this year will certainly see Sloman become a contender to join the same hallowed ranks as the likes of John Martyn.

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Auteured States Andrew Sloman @ Underbelly, 26.03.09

Andrew Sloman introduced a full seven piece band to the achingly cool, relatively new, Hoxton venue: Zigfrid Von Underbelly (or just ‘Underbelly’ to his friends!)
I’d witnessed first hand Sloman’s carefully crafted acoustic pop ballads at the equally hip and trendy Hoxton venue Bar Music Hall back in January, and had been mightily impressed. The backline of appropriatley named Arthur Bassingham on bass, and Mike Terrel on drums, had been tighter than a pair of Hoxton indie kids spray-on, low-slung jeans – and provided a perfect platform for the virtuoso singer-songwriter that is Andy Sloman.

So despite being late for the performance – as I was half-way across the other side of town – I was frankly champing at the bit with anticipation to hear how good the songsmith’s deceptively simple yet intricate arrangements would sound when backed up by the “Mizenus Quartet” ( consisting of Elen Richards – Violin, Gwen Richards – Violin, Francesca Hunt – Viola and Carina Drury – Cello )

The first number I caught was the superbly written Silence – a number where Bassingham and Terrel craft every note and beat, providing a perfect accompaniment to Sloman’s vocal lines and understated acoustic harmonies. Unfortunately, the strings were too low in the mix and for me just distracted from the power of the number … this continued, with a mixture of mild feedback and an overly-garrulous audience, through Deadwood and The Machine, which was a crying shame. The strings section was certainly visually arresting, but that meant Sloman was shoved to one side of the stage and almost lost both visually, and even sometimes audibly, as the sound engineer tried to balance all the elements on stage. Bass and drums remained the rock though, and fortunately carried the songs through the first few numbers.

Now let’s get back to that noisy crowd eh? When I’d seen Andy at Bar Music Hall there had been audible silence from those frankly blown away by his song-writing – and the buggers who wanted to carouse and drink were all near the back and not able to distract those of us who wanted to listen. But at Underbelly I was minded of the notorius Damien Rice gig at Brixton Academy, where Rice abused the crowd for talking, shouting and whistling through his emotional ‘quiet bits’ …
“Youse can all come up here and I’ll give you yer money back for your tickets and then youse can all feck off to the pub if ya just wanna chat! If this is what it means to play bigger gigs you can keep it!”

Or something to that effect.

Of course Andy Sloman, auteur of a new generation of British troubadors though he might be, was far too much of a professional to lose his rag and soldiered on through a hubbub of occasional feedback and drunken Hoxtonites. You gotta admire his professionalism – and that of his band. Sloman’s sound always reminds me a bit of the seminal arthouse band of the mid-90s The Auteurs and I guess that’s no bad thing … he just could have done with a more appreciative bohemian stereotype, rather than the noisy gobshites we actually had to put up with!

Nonetheless, by the time we’d got to Right to Know and the utterly exceptional Back on My Feet, the band had definitely risen above it all; and to the faithful at the front, started to really get into their stride. Just in time for the sound engineer to call time – which all seemed a bit premature.
So in conclusion – I think that had the line-ups been reversed for the two venues (e.g. the 7-piece plus strings at Bar Music Hall and a fully amped up 3-piece at Underbelly) it would have worked better. And in fact that is exactly what will be happening on 28th May, so I’d definitely recommend going down to Bar Music Hall and catching some of the unique brand of understated, lovingly crafted, pop balladeering which define Andy Sloman and his extended band.

http://www.myspace.com/andrewsloman

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Parklife Revisited Blur w/ Support From Vampire Weekend + Amadou & Mariam + Florence & The Machine @ Hyde Park, 03.07.09

I’ve always had a strong connection to Blur … Albarn and Co are only a year or so older than me, they studied arts about the same time as I did … and of course I stole Graham Coxon’s girlfriend!

Well obviously the last one’s a bit of an exaggeration … but I did spend most of my first year at Art College trying to go out with a girl who claimed she went out with him for a bit (or was it just snogged him at a party?) So, consequently I suppose it’s a bit weird, with that tenuous connection, and only 1-degree of separation between me and one of the most talented guitar players of my generation, that I’ve never seen either Coxon (or perhaps more importantly Blur) live. I haven’t seen Radiohead or Oasis either – but that’s another story!

I have to confess there’s always been sense of ‘missing the boat’ about not seeing any of those bands live … and I might still not have seen them if it weren’t for the tenacious missus, who, having witnessed the triumphant return of the Kings of Britpop to the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury on the BBC, announced that she was getting tickets to the Hyde Park gigs come hell or high-water! So, after a bit of compulsive eBaying and some Paypal jiggery-pokery we had e-tickets duly emailed to us (which I was personally convinced weren’t going to work!) The weather report had forecast rain, at the Thursday night gig Albarn had confessed the gig ‘would be hard to repeat’… and so I kinda thought it would all be a bit of an anti-climax.

Anyway… the weather stayed hot, the sun was shining and the khaki-grass expanses of Hyde Park were strewn with plastic bottles, crashed out 30-somethings and cans of cheap lager. Even the tickets scanned in perfectly and before we knew it, we were in the dusty, Tuborg & Merrydown Cider-soaked throng.

The sun was still beating down strongly when Blur took to the stage – opening with?She’s So High ; an echoey, spiralling, semi-soporific track from their more ‘Madchester’ influenced Leisure album. Potentially a strange track to open with I thought, but since this was the opening track of their first ever LP it remains an evocative sound-scape of what brought Blur to most people’s attention back in 1991. The crowd dreamily sang along with the chorus, and Damian geared himself up for the more up-tempo Girls & Boys – which found both the crowd and the rest of the band in boisterous uproar. As he had done at Glastonbury, Albarn went on a foray down the front and got as up-close-and-personal as can be reasonably expected at a festival – while most of us had to be content with watching the good-natured scuffles down the front on the huge side-screen monitors.

Coxon and Albarn seemed positively infused with energy (not bad when you reach 40) and bounced around the stage doing jumps, and in Coxon’s case backward rolls with his guitar, as the set progressed through the golden evening accompanied by songs charting the history of golden-age Blur. Spikey TrimmTabb preceded eerie and edgy Out of Time which segued with almost psychedelic applomb into Badhead. Musically (if not perhaps emotionally) Blur’s comeback had reached a pinnacle.

Songs such as There’s No Other Way re-enforced the fact that even when heavily-influenced by the scene at the time, Blur were able to carve out highly-original song-writing; and that particular Coxon-riff remains one of the most memorable sounds of early 90s indie pop. The strange thing though was that all the songs did seem really fresh, with an almost feral intensity that certainly didn’t sound like songs they’d all played a thousand times before. Coxon, James and Rowntree seemed to be relishing the return to playing their songs together with Albarn. Other than the fact there were 50,000 people in attendance and you knew all of them were over 40 … you could almost believe that this was a band at the height of their powers, not looking back nostalgically at a back-catalogue of hits.

As the sun went down, Albarn picked up his toyishly-small Spanish guitar and struck out the first chords of Beetlebum. One of the benefits of the ever-present side-screens was that every nuance in the band’s faces could be picked up by the cameras and shown to the whole crowd. During both this song and To The End I detected quite a lot of ambivalent emotions in Albarn. The rest of the band still looked like a bunch of adults who’d suddenly been allowed to act as teenagers again and were revelling in every moment but for Albarn there definitely was a bittersweet element. Some powerful emotive memories were being stirred up by both the re-forming of the band AND playing songs which were clearly detailing the emotional fall-out from the long-drawn out destructive breakdown of his relationship with Elastica frontwoman, Justine Frischmann. At Glastonbury he’d looked quite ‘wired’ and I’d originally thought maybe he was being chemically assisted … but at Hyde Park I got the impression that the slightly wild-but-mournful look in his eyes was coming from deep within himself. As he referenced both the powers of sun and moon more than a couple of times during the set, he was clearly tapping into some almost pagan spirituality and deep, complex emotions.
Coffee &TV saw a switch to Coxon as centre-stage, exemplifying his slightly-off key vocals and off-beat style in one neat number … and then we were into the predictable singalongs of Country House and Tender is the Night. The crowd joined in with gusto and continued for some time after Tender had ended – which prompted some amusement from Albarn who orchestrated the singing like a slightly-wild-eyed conductor for a while. Parklife saw the arrival of original narrator-vocalist Phil Daniels in the “Fred-Perry-and-white-jeans” uniform of a Mod supplanted to the 21st Century. Again the crowd sang/talked along with enthusiasm and reflected that the origins of the song came directly from what we were all collectively indulging in – a drunken, summery, doss-about in a London park.
Finally after over an hour of back-to-back hits the band retired for their first break … to re-appear minutes later with For Tomorrow and the punk-inspired, anthemic ‘Song 2’ .

Personally I thought that might be it, as they’d played for well over an hour and a half, and all major hits had been covered. But just before 10pm the band re-appeared for a final two numbers – the first the slightly-haunting and evocative Death of a Party which seemed extremely fitting, and then The Universal … which once again precipitated universal singalongs that carried on long after the band had said their final good-byes.

As we trudged over the detritus of the wrecked parkland in the dark, I was left with a similar ambivalence to what I’d imagined Albarn had felt on stage. The gig was a real and fantastic example of why a band should reform and play live gigs again; but was there perhaps an eagerness in most of the audience, gazing through rose-tinted spectacles, to re-experience the golden age of Cool Britannia?

It’s a fact that 20 years ago I would have been more pleased with myself stealing Coxon’s girlfriend, whilst these days what I’d really like to get his hands on is his ’72 Telecaster Deluxe … The TV screens bring the live experience closer and yet also perhaps disguise the real ‘feeling’ of being at a gig. Or is it just that we’re older and more cynical and to be honest, as a nation, just a bit more middle class these days?

Blur ARE clearly one of the best British Pop bands produced in the last 30 years and both as song-writers and musicians they can’t be faulted. For some reason their songs have kept a resonance with the moiety of middle-class middle-england that perhaps Oasis (and others) might have lost. It will be interesting to hear after Wembley if the Brothers Gallagher will be gathering the gushing plaudits that have followed Blur’s Glastonbury & Hyde Park comebacks? When it comes right down to it, it’s the music that matters. Blur’s opus encompasses such a gamut of musical styles and influences it’s difficult to imagine that the rocka-rolla formulas of Oasis can compete. I’m almost tempted to go along and find out …

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Industrial Power Nine Inch Nails & Jane’s Addiction @ The O2 Arena, 15.07.09

One of the things that will definitely make me give a gig a five star review (which doesn’t happen that often!) is when the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end after just the opening number. Trent Reznor and his industrial-vehicle Nine Inch Nails may have been going 20 years now, but they have lost none of their edge.
Reznor also seems to be able to call up some serious heavy-weights for support too … Los Angeles art-house cum glam-rock outfit Jane’s Addiction (who hail from the same era and of course were on the same bill for the legendary 1st Lollapalooza festival!) filled the ‘house band’ slot as they liked to call it.

A powerhouse of power chords and soaring high-pitched vocals filled the O2 Arena from edge to edge as we entered the damn impressive arena (I hadn’t been to the O2 before!) Songs such as Ocean Size, Sex is Violent and Stop were executed with camp posturing verve – Perry Farrel dancing around like an epileptic marionette in a flouncy glam-rock shirt and spangly trousers! I have to say that I’ve never been 100% sure of Jane’s Addiction and, on the night, I probably missed Been Caught Stealing which is both a legendary track and a personal fave. However they certainly played with ability, humour, and power … and more importantly got the crowd going. Art-house video visuals and giant-size bordello side-drops added to the feeling these were a no ordinary support act AND in fact they were so successful in getting the crowd hot, that they duly demanded an encore (not that usual for a ‘house band’!) The acapella-themed Everybody’s Friend finished off the Jane’s set and we headed to the bar … bypassing the ‘Ghostbuster-like’ vendors with their dispensing backpacks of cold-beer!

In fact I was accompanied by an old mate of mine who’s seen NiN a couple of times – we last went to their Brixton Academy gigs in 2007. This time however we were ALSO accompanied by his 16 year old son, at his first ever ‘proper rock gig’… and what a treat he got!

Almost from the first, Reznor wrong-footed the ‘old hands’. I had been slightly disappointed at the Brixton gigs and to be honest I wasn’t sure how the O2 would work with a band like Nine Inch nails … I assumed it was bigger or something and would dwarf the intimate, entropic sound of Reznor’s musical journeys of self-destruction. The lights were still on & it sounded like a sound check as the drums started up and the crowd moved forward – I even said to the youngster with us “don’t know what everyone’s getting excited about, nothing happens ’til the lights go down – bloody gig virgins!” Well the joke was on me as Reznor took to the stage, and we all surged forward to listen to the understated strains of the opening number under full-arena lights.

This unassuming start, with so little apparent ceremony, of course merely served to highlight the latent power of the sonic-boom that was unleashed as the first chorus kicked in – CRASH the lights snapped off and the 3 million “Killer-watt” strobes blinded us as the thrash-chords blasted out of the sound rig. Fuck me it was cool!

Reznor’s intentions were clear – power, aggression & that curious feral quality of his music, strained to fill every cubic metre of the O2 arena. And it didn’t stop there – as the song reached both its musical and emotional crescendo, Reznor kicked over the organ stand and after a few more power-chords stalked off the stage throwing the guitar angrily into the strobing depths at the back… the hairs on back of my neck were well and truly on end by now! Fucking hell I thought – where do you go when you open like that! The 16 year old in our group just stood there agog, but to be honest, I doubt my mate and I looked much different!
Somehow Reznor maintained the energy, passion and uncompromising intensity throughout the next half-dozen numbers or so … classic songs such as Piggy, Heresy, Wish and Reptilian summoned up a sort of industrial nightmare lullaby of angst-ridden late 20th century life. Even the sound-mixing engineer couldn’t maintain his cool, took off his sweat-soaked shirt, and was pogo-ing away in his enclosure. It was to be frank, pretty extra-ordinary. Even more reflective songs, such as La Mer, had a dissonant potency about them. The mood only really lifted when Reznor’s collaborative homage to Bowie surfaced and he played I’m afraid of Americans. This was swiftly followed by a somewhat more obvious paying of respect to Gary Numan, who guested vocals on Down In It … the first NiN single released way back in 1989. Inevitably the proto-industrial electro anthem In Cars followed and Reznor had paid his dues to two of his musical influences and erstwhile mentors.

Newer material from With teeth, such as The Hand That Feeds proved that Reznor still had plenty to offer in terms of insightful observations and sheer raw power … by the time we’d got to the logical conclusion of Head Like A Hole, the crowd was once more at a collective fever pitch. A guy just in front of me – who must have been in his mid-thirties at least – joined the sound-engineer in pogo-ing on the side of his enclosure, screaming the lyrics at the top of his lungs (as did most of us), thereby providing his own accompaniment to the classic paean of urban fin-de-siecle existential rage.

After a brief shell-shocked lull, the familiar piano chords of Hurt signified both the encore and a sort of coda to the evening’s exhausting emotional outpourings. The crowd duly accompanied once more, giving a hymnal quality as their voices echoed around the near-perfect acoustics of the arena. The cathartic, vitriolic anger had passed, we were sated, satisfied and replete … ready once more to venture back into the reality outside the Dome; back to the strange little 21st century lives that we’d all sang rage-fuelled laments against for the past 90 minutes.

All in all it was a blinder of a gig. Even Reznor himself was taken aback by the vehemence of the crowd’s support, not only did most go along for the ride but, in the words of one of the tracks off The Fragile, We’re in this Together … tonight he definitely had company! He was the most emphatic I’ve ever heard him at the end of the gig and sounded genuinely touched by the experience – and he said as much. Usually you get very little more than ‘Thanks’ from Reznor.

One thing that I couldn’t get out of my mind though … this was the same stage that old Mikey Jackson would have had to go back to, had he ever played the greatest gigs that never were. Did that somehow contribute to the tsunami of intensity that accompanied this gig? Did the arena itself somehow focus on Reznor and summon up all the disappointment and unfulfilled intentions of a 20th Century icon into that one night? I guess that’s going too far … but one thing’s for sure, the NiN gig really was a one off and I doubt it could be repeated. Could Jackson really have pulled off fifty more of the same? I doubt even at the height of his flawed demi-godlike powers he could have done that to be honest … and in the end he ended up a victim of the very modern-day demons that Reznor so conclusively and convincingly exorcises through his music.

Setting the Standard Johnny Lippiett Summer Jazz Grooves @ Boaters @ Boaters, 09.08.09

Jazz is a funny old thing really. In essence a jazz gig is kind of like a gig by a covers band … it’s just that the covers (or standards as they are called in ‘jazz-speak’) are from a fairly wide range of musicians, and indeed even an extensive time period. This is in no way meant to belittle a jazz gig – by my reckoning, on my Spotify playlist I have a fairly definitive collection of about 40 Jazz standards.

There are, give or take, at least three dozen official standards and at least half a dozen ‘extras’ that jazz musos are required to know. What IS amazing about a jazz gig, especially at the kind of standard that the audience has come to expect at Boaters, is that the jazz standards enable the musicians to get together and play a top class gig pretty much without a rehearsal. And of course the other unique thing about jazz is that the jazz standards are really only a framework and that by jazz’s very nature of improvisation, solos and sheer unpredictability … you usually end up with something pretty special. And that’s what we got from Johnny Lippiett and his jazz comrades.

Jazz standards aside … there’s nothing ‘standard’ about Lippiett. A swinging and melodic tenor saxophonist, JL has been a finalist in the Young Jazz Musician of the year (back in 1996) which led him to play with Courtney Pine and become well known on the London jazz scene. A truly international musician, he has since lived in New Zealand where he became a jazz tutor in Wellington, as well as playing gigs all over Australia and New Zealand. In more recent years he has relocated to New York where he has been enjoying great success performing at the city’s famous jazz clubs – from Brooklyn, to Soho and the East Village. Lippiett – on a rare visit back to the UK – was joined by Boaters’ stalwart keyboard-player Simon Carter, Mark Hodgson on stand-up bass and up-and-coming jazz drummer, Chris Dagley.
Carter – a solid gold piano player who has toured with the likes of JK & Jamiroqua – gave his usual assured performance as both jazz heavy-weight & genial host. Carter is partly responsible for the jazz legend that is Boaters, home to one of the longest running weekly jazz residencies in London and the South East. Largely by his efforts, this Sunday night jazz institution is coming up to its second decade of playing host to some of the biggest names on the contemporary jazz circuit – including some of the UK’s best home-grown talents.

Mark Hodgdon stood in as jazz anchor; a solid & unpretentious, if unflamboyant stand up bass player. Hodgson’s calm repose seemed to throw into exciting relief the antics of his partner in the jazz ‘engine room’ – the indefatigable Chris Dagley. Dagley’s drumming accompanied by a Tom Waits-esque gurning and much showmanship, really showcased some incredible jazz drumming, reminscent of jazz greats such as Buddy Rich (or my favourite drummer of all time, ‘Animal’ from the Muppet Show!) In jazz circles Dagley is getting a reputation as THE drummer to play with; after his finale solo it was easy to see why.

Dagley aside, JL stole the show – his virtuoso performance seeming to shape and re-define the well-established jazz standards and make them seem well … non-standard. The assured swagger of this young jazzmeister – who’s a regular fixture of the East Village jazz scene in NYC – made an impression on the crowd at once with his fresh, inventive and above all exciting take on standards such as Duke Ellington’s Sweet Georgia Brown and Miles Davis’ So What?

Lippiett has been know to quote “There’s no money in jazz – even in New York!” Yet despite this (or maybe because of it!) Lippiett brings plenty of attitude to his playing. When Lippiett is blowing up a storm, his face contorts and he puts every ounce of his being through that reed. With JL in full-flow it’s easy to remember that jazz was the punk rock of its day, complete with bad-boy image and a long history of wild parties and hard drug abuse. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that these days – with the audience, and even the bands themselves, usually consisting of goatee-bearded, turtle-neck wearing, real-ale supping old jazz gentlemen. Somehow JL and his band re-inject some of this punk rock energy into the jazz standards – the average age of both the band and the audience was mid-30s rather than mid-60s (although I will admit there weres till a few jazz gentlemen nodding their heads along to the beat).

After the gig I got to thinking, if the new breed of classical musicians such as the much-fêted James Rhodes can bring a ‘rockstar’ edge to classical music and thereby bring it to newer, younger audiences, could Johnny Lippiett and his contemporaries bring about the same sea-change in jazz? After all playing Bach and Beethoven concertos, is much the same as playing the jazz standards … it’s all about interpretation and performance. If JL, Carter, Dagley and Co are setting the new standard – then a jazz renaissance might not be too far out of the question.

© Copyright R M Lippiett 2009