Soweto Kinch’s White Juju dropped us on a political see-saw of time. Unsettling. Disturbing. But with an overtone of hope. It was a brutally honest and intellectual investigation into the “powerful suspicion that the current receptivity to the black experience… may only be momentary”. All conveyed through an uncommon mix of...
All posts by Jane Cocklin
After winning three Grammys, it’s clear Cécile McLorin Salvant has been faced with artistic compromise. I felt she had sadly succumbed to sticking with her status quo. The performance felt bedded in her safe place. However she is a real master of reinventing songs and it’s her embodiment of every...
Beware of the front row for this night. With a twelve-piece horn and eight-piece rhythm section, some serious vibrations will be coming your way! New Regency Orchestra is a new collaborative project curated by Lex Blondin and co-led by musical director and African diasporic multi-percussionist Crispin ‘Spry’ Robinson. Presenting an...
Judi Jackson is able to tease out more erotic energy from a crowd than eighteen months of lockdown boredom. Or maybe it’s the combination of both. This was a night packed with couples flirting, whispering and grinding. I was enchanted too, and just one worrying step away from trying to...
Archie Shepp may not have executed his ideas with the same technical dexterity I imagine of earlier years. However in his mid-eighties, he still delivered a beautifully effectual experience that transcended any physical limitations. Alongside Jason Moran, their musical ideas revealed their reverence towards the plight of inequality and the complexities...
What’s it like when fresh Colombian sounds meet their sonic siblings from the UK jazz scene? Enter Mestizo. Rising names in the UK Jazz and Colombian new music scenes have reunited for a one-off streamed show as the collective Mestizo. The performance has undergone a creative reinvention following their first...
This is an album that has landed at a time we may most appreciate it. Elevation is at the heart of this record. It is an LP inspired by afrobeat and spiritual jazz with strong elements of Detroit groove pulsing through the soundtrack. Nicola Conte and Gianluca Petrella’s message is...
It’s not been easy, Kaleema tells us, to make herself a nurturing musical home. Two inner worlds kept colliding. The seemingly disparate areas of her creative life, classical study and electronic production, kept crashing against each other. But Kaleema persevered through her orchestral upbringing. She found her way to the...
Israeli-born with Persian parents, Tel Aviv dwelling artist Liraz is no ordinary electro-pop musician. For the creation of her incredibly popping and danceable second album, she took a big risk to confront religious-political tensions between Iran and Israel, and collaborate with Iranian musicians to create an album influenced by 1970s...
Shakespeare said it all with ‘If music be the food of love, play on’. Music is the blood that runs through the veins of our very best human experiences. Celebration. Expression. Dance. Evolution. Art. Intimacy. Communication. Due to COVID-19 restrictions we have no longer been able to congregate for performance...