At the end of Bill Frisell’s concert in Bristol last night, my son (who had bought the tickets as a belated birthday present) asked me which of all the times I’d seen him live was my favourit...
https://thebluemoment.com/2024/05/17/bill-frisell-in-bristol-brussels-orvieto/
It’s been exciting to watch the blossoming of a new young UK jazz scene in recent years, and now it’s possible to welcome a historical survey of its emergence. André Marmot’s Unapologetic ...
Note: After this piece was first posted, Matana pointed out to me that her pronouns are “they/them”. I’ve rewritten it to take account of that preference. Matana Roberts did a lot of talkin...
https://thebluemoment.com/2024/04/26/matana-roberts-at-the-roundhouse/
Tall enough to be unmissable in any environment, and with a truly remarkable fashion sense, Shabaka Hutchings had presence from day one of his career. To me, as an observer, that was the concert ...
“We’ve never really been an emotional band,” Lloyd Swanton observed drily after the first set on the last of the Necks’ four nights at Cafe Oto in London this week, “but it seems to be ...
A typical day in the A&R department at Island Records’ London headquarters in November 1975. Four or five people coming in to play their demo tapes to me or my assistant, Howard Thompson, in th...
There’s been a bit of a kerfuffle at London’s music conservatoires in recent days over an email from a teacher claiming that white students in the jazz departments are disadvantaged by the pr...
https://thebluemoment.com/2024/03/26/new-sounds-in-the-round/
Who could have imagined, as the music and those who made it were fighting for their existence, the three-figure sums that British jazz albums from the ’60s and ’70s would be fetching in a new...
https://thebluemoment.com/2024/03/08/the-artwork-of-british-jazz/
When the painter Penny Marrows was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer in March 2023, her son, the London-based composer and guitarist Billy Marrows, began writing pieces for her. Some of them w...
The first public performance of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” was given 100 years ago this week, on 12 February 1924, at the Aeolian Hall on West 43rd Street in New York City, by Pau...
https://thebluemoment.com/2024/02/13/rhapsody-in-blue-at-100/