Gig listing no 13: January 2025

-
Wishing you all a fabulous 2025. Check out some of these venues and events below, especially those featuring past guests on the Harmonious World podcast:



Sunday 12th January 2025: Soul Mama, Gantry Hotel, 40 Celebration Ave, Stratford E20 1DB
Coltrane and Hartman on Impulse! feat. Denys Baptiste and Marvin Muoneke. Revisiting the famous album when John Coltrane teamed up with vocalist Johnny Hartman to explore their favourite romantic standards, tenor sax boss Denys Baptiste is joined by the extraordinary vocalist Marvin Muoneke and a top-flight rhythm section of Gary Crosby (bass), Alex Webb (piano) and Noah Ojumu (drums). Click here for tickets & info

Friday 10 January 2025: Soul Mama, Gantry Hotel, 40 Celebration Avenue, Stratford E20 1DB
Down for the Count presents their Swing That Music show. Click here for tickets & info

Saturday 18th January 2025: Soul Mama, Gantry Hotel, 40 Celebration Ave, Stratford E20 1DB
Ineza & ‘Women’s Words, Sisters’ Stories’ comes to Yolanda Brown’s new jazz venue in east London. Click here for tickets & info

Friday 24th January 2025: Brasserie Toulouse Lautrec, 140 Newington Butts, London SE11 4RN
The Pocket Ellington, a seven-piece celebration of the Ellington repertoire with Alan Barnes (reeds), Tony Kofi (tenor), Simon Finch (trumpet), David Lalljee (trombone), Dave Green (bass) and Winston Clifford (drums). As well as clever adaptations of Ellington classics by pianist / MD Alex Webb, the group also plays music from arranger/composers influenced by the Duke, including Mingus, Monk and Gil Evans. Click here for tickets & info

Friday 31st January 2025: Brasserie Toulouse Lautrec, 140 Newington Butts, London SE11 4RN
It Takes Two: Lulu Pierre and Marvin Muoneké revisit the great jazz duets. Sarah Vaughan & Billy Eckstine, Ella & Louis, Ray Charles & Betty Carter – jazz has a rich history of romantic and swinging duets. Stellar vocalists Marvin Muoneké and Lulu Pierre have a magical chemistry together, and recreate some of the greatest of these duets with the Alex Webb Trio. Click here for tickets & info

Tuesday 18 February 2025: Pizza Express Holborn
Down for the Count presents a Motown special. Click here for tickets & info

Wednesday 30 April to Monday 5 May 2025: Cheltenham Jazz Festival
David Gray, Jools Holland, Amadou & Mariam, Nubya Garcia and Corrine Bailey Rae with the Ronnie Scott's Orchestra confirmed for six day event which returns in the spring. Click here for tickets & info

Friday 25 to Sunday 27 May 2025: Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London
Returning for its fourth edition, Brick Lane Jazz Festival is set to be bigger, brighter, and bolder than ever. This three-day event will feature a top-tier lineup that highlights the vibrant convergence of London’s underground music scene. The festival will showcase both emerging and established artists across a range of genres, including jazz, hip hop, neo-soul, RnB, broken beat, and electronic music. Spread across more than 12 iconic venues in and around Brick Lane, further details will be announced soon. Click here for tickets & info

Friday 4 to Sunday 6 July 2025: Glynde Place, East Sussex
Love Supreme Jazz Festival is the largest green field music event of its kind and it's well worth a visit. Maxwell has already been announced as a headliner and he's being joined on the listings by Smokey Robinson, who is set to perform his first UK show in 15 years . Click here for tickets & info


Ongoing

* Jazz Cafe Posk in Hammersmith: a great, relaxed venue

* Check out one of my favourite venues - London's marvellous 606 Club

* In Milton Keynes, there's also the Stables Theatre, which often features live music

* Different venues, plus lots of music on offer at Boisdale in Belgravia and Canary Wharf

* Lots to see and hear at Kings Place, right next to Kings Cross and St Pancras

* Don't forget Ronnie Scott's, which has a range of jazz to suit all tastes

* Just a little further north in Soho is Pizza Express on Dean Street, which also has sister venues in Holborn and on the Kings Road.

* A blatant plug for the fabulous Club 85 in my home town of Hitchin. They've just launched a GoFundMe appeal to ensure that live music continues, so please take a look

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Big Wade - 'Piano Man' out now

-
Image
Big Wade and Black Swan Theory collectively blends funk, soul, jazz and everything that fills the cracks between those genres: his new album -  Piano Man - on all major streaming platforms ahead of the Piano Man Tour 2024 , which has dates across the US. Piano Man  brings a selection of original and covers, including a stunning version of Autumn Leaves , which reinvents the song as the funky, electronic Autumn . Big Wade's voice takes the song's melody and improvises around and around, with backing vocals and a deliberately sparse arrangement underpinning the song. Similarly, on Children of the Ghetto , the lead and backing vocals blend in with the soulful musicians of Black Swan Theory. Electronics are used with dexterity, often expanding the vocal lines, as in the ethereal and ghostly opening of Don't Let Me Go . However, the tools never dominate - simply adding depth and layers to the funk. Never more than when Big Wade enters a new world in Interludes , including vocals...
Read more

The Darius Brubeck Quartet live at Jazz Cafe Posk

-
Image
My first visit to Jazz Cafe Posk in London's Hammersmith coincided with the 60th anniversary of Posk - The Polish Social and Cultural Association - and the first performance in the club by pianist and composer Darius Brubeck. Photo credit @ Hilary Seabrook Darius was 10 when he joined his father on a historic tour of Poland. The Dave Brubeck Quartet toured Poland from 6 to 18 March 1958, just three years after the communist regime's ban on jazz was lifted. Without a doubt, this was the biggest jazz event in post-war Poland, with the archetypal and hugely successful outfit of Dave Brubeck (piano), Paul Desmond (alto sax), Eugene Wright (bass) and Joe Morello (drums). Sixty years later, in  2018, Darius took his own quartet - the same one he brought to Posk in May 2024 - to Poland for a significant tour, recorded and released as the Live in Poland album. Several of the tracks from this album were in the set at Posk and this quartet displayed in depth the benefits of playing to...
Read more

‘Memory in Motion’ with The Jazz Defenders

-
Image
A packed Pizza Express in London’s Soho was blasted by The Jazz Defenders as they unleashed their new album on the world - celebrating International Jazz Day 2024 in style. The Jazz Defenders Memory in Motion is a great album, out now on Haggis Records , with touches of Horace Silver and tinges of Herbie Hancock. There was something slightly disconcerting about an electronic keyboard sitting on top of the wonderful Dean Street Steinway and George Cooper handled them both with a dexterity and panache that made it all make sense. A talented bunch, The Jazz Defenders take their influences from wherever they choose, including some of the other ensembles in which they strut their stuff.  Horns are courtesy of Jake McMurchie (tenor sax) and Nick Malcolm (trumpet) and they are as much at ease on stabbing and intricate lines as they are on solos through the tracks. A solid rhythm and added excitement comes from Ian Matthews (drums) and Will Harris (double bass and bass guitar). Matthews ...
Read more