Tony Kinsey - Embroidery Suite

Tony Kinsey

Chris Biscoe

The Tony Kinsey Big Band
Tony Kinsey - leader, composer, arranger, drums
Andy Panayi - saxophones
Sam Mayne - saxophone
Jimmy Hastings - saxophone
Vasilis Xenopoulos - saxophone
Chris Biscoe - baritone saxophone
Tony Fisher - trumpet
George Hogg - trumpet
Guy Barker - trumpet
Steve Fishwick - trumpet
Mark Nightingale - trombone
Duncan Campbell - trombone
Ashley Horton - trombone
Bill Geldard - trombone
John Horler - piano
Andy Cleyndert - bass

Duncan Campbell

Date -11th March 2016
Venue -  Sunbury Cricket Club, UK

Andy Cleyndert

Tony Kinsey is one of Britain's finest jazz drummers and composers, with scores ranging from jazz and classical, to television and film. He was a founder member of the John Dankworth Seven, later forming his own quartets and quintet that made their mark on British Jazz history and in the hearts of Jazz fans across the globe.

In his playing career he has worked with many of the world's Jazz greats, including Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Cleo Laine and Oscar Peterson.

Andy Panayi

The members of the Tony Kinsey Jazz Orchestra are amongst the top players in the UK, equally at home on the world stage too. A number of the orchestra have worked with Tony Kinsey since the band was first formed in 1974 when they broadcast and performed The River Thames Suite, a commission from the BBC. Tony is also a man of the moment, here he enlists some of the young bucks who prowl the current London scene like Steve Fishwick (trumpet) and Vasilis Xenopoulos (saxophone).

Ashley Horton

They came from far and wide for the sold out performance at the Sunbury Cricket Club but all is not lost for those who couldn't secure a ticket. The evening's concert was recorded by sound engineer Paul Golding (The Lord of the Rings, Downton Abbey, Mr Selfridge) and will be released later in 2016.

George Hogg

The Embroidery Suite was written by Tony Kinsey and gifted to the Millennium Embroidery to celebrate the opening of the Sunbury Embroidery Gallery in the summer of 2006. The music was first performed at St Mary's Church in Sunbury.

Guy Barker

The Embroidery Project has received enormous support from the local community over the years and this suite is as much a tribute to the people as the artwork itself. Although this marks the 10th anniversary of the music there is every reason to believe that the power of this composition and recording will live on for years to come.



Jimmy Hastings

This blog has had a close relationship with The Sunbury Embroidery Gallery, in recent years as I have commissioned, organised and displayed a set of maps in the 'On The Map' exhibition at the gallery in 2015.  They included both the The Sunbury Dice Game and Sunbury Park: A Map and Nature Trail which are inspired by the nearby park and walled gardens.



Mark Nightingale

Tony Kinsey's Embroidery Suite reads like a map too, a walk of sound perhaps, especially if you follow signposted titles like 'River Life', Life at the Inn' and 'Monksbridge. If you get the chance to buy the CD, close your eyes and take a wander with your mind, for every note is a beautiful thread in the rich tapestry of Sunbury upon Thames.

AL.

Steve Fishwick

Tony Fisher




Bill Geldard

John Horler



Sam Mayne



Vasilis Xenopoulos

 

Shirley Smart Trio - Jewelling currents

Shirley Smart

Shirley Smart - cello
Maurizio Minardi - accordion
Demi Garcia Sabat - percussion

Demi Garcia Sabat

Date - 8 March 2016
Venue -  Performance Space, City University, London
Current Album - Random Road by Melange

Shirley Smart live dates -
6 APRIL - Gypsy Nights with Melange, Brixton Ritzy
21 APRIL - Balagan Café Band, Book and Kitchen
24 APRIL - Last Summer's Tealights, Arts Depot, Finchley

The Shirley Smart Trio presents a fresh new approach to the cello, taking the listener on an improvised journey incorporating music from North Africa, Middle East, Balkans, and South America, and jazz as well as original compositions. Shirley will be heading the London Cello Society's "Beyond Cello" division beginning in 2016.

Maurizio Minardi

The urgency of broken pieces dot the river bed like the hand of an overexcited Seurat. Maurizio Minardi is the stone, the boulders as smooth as the accordionists naked pate. His varied hues and heavyweight shapes shimmering beneath the cool waters of Shirley Smart's cello. She is the flow, her notes run around and over Minardi. Dominating and swamping when the swell is high, yet playful and alive when they work together. Smart has both a river's predictability and unpredictability, remaining mostly within the boundaries of her melodies but dancing and jinking within those running currents. She flows and stops, but always with a wistful race towards the future, to be swept downstream where we can only see the light jewelling on the river's surface.

AL.

Bird - Hypnotise cut

Bird

Janie Price

Date - 7 March 2016
Venue -  Groucho Club, Soho, London
Current Album - Figments Of Our Imagination
Single - Hypnotise

Live dates -
12 April - Tivoli, Utrecht, Netherlands
14 April - De Roma, Borgerhout, Belgium
21 April - Capitole, Gent, Belgium

Bird is an art form in herself. Like all good artworks there is both a nod to the future and a drawing upon the past, whether distant, imagined or just experienced. The world and time push around Bird, 'Lucky' is like waiting for a train and then have it defiantly charge past you when your back is turned. The new single 'Hypnotise', released today, is a charmer, a slight of hand that tangles like a magnetic snake. 'Small Town' as the name might suggest builds brick upon red brick, it is proud to be urban, like much of her work. Light slants through doorways, fragments of people with overlapping lives, the way you cannot stop the glue oozing out of a collage of magazine pieces. She is layered purity and dirty light. 'Small Town' provides us with a front door peephole so that we can look out with safety and guilt. What we see is a world of cut outs, a living breathing world that has been spliced by Matisse's hand. It is clean and crisp, angular and sharp. It is a pinpoint of colour that burns like the sun through this city's lens.

AL.

Firefay - The King Must Die

Carole Bulewski

Adam Bulewski

Firefay
Carole Bulewski - Vocals, piano/keyboards
Adam Bulewski - Guitar and related instruments
Ronnie Maxwell - Bass
Matt Grabham - Violin
James Conner - Drums

James Conner

Date - 12th February 2016
Venue -  Cavendish Arms, Stockwell, London
Current Album - The King Must Die
Review by Grey Malkin on The Active Listener

Conspiratorial album launch of Firefay's The King Must Die at the dark cornered Cavendish Arms in Stockwell, London.

It's not just because Carole Bulewski sings lead vocals and takes centre stage that your eyes are constantly caught in her gaze. She is the geological Arête you tread, the knife edge ridge that plummets to either side with no possibility of escape. You do not know whether to keep your attention permanently on her for fear of what lurks to right and left or to turn back, breaking the spell. You are complicit in this game of enchantments. 

Matt Grabham
 

If The King Must Die then Matt Grabham is the cleaver, the man who must do the fateful deed. He keeps his eyes lowered because he knows he has the power. You can feel it in the crowd, in his pose, in his music.

AL.

Ronnie Maxwell

Patrick Cornelius - 606 AA Milne

Patrick Cornelius

Nick Vayenas

Patrick Cornelius - saxophone
Nick Vayenas - trombone
Alex Garnett - sax/clarinet
Andre Canniere - trumpet
Phil Robson - guitar
Steve Hamilton - piano
Andrew Bain - drums
Michael Janisch - bass.

Andre Canniere

Date - 8th February 2016
Venue - 606 Club, London
Current Album - While We're Still Young



 The UK CD launch of Patrick  Cornelius' "While We're Still Young," his suite for octet with songs inspired by the children's poetry of A.A. Milne, performed by a Anglo-American 8 piece band.

Cornelius' latest project is inspired by the book “When We Were Very Young” a collection of poetry written by AA Milne, the English author best known for the beloved children’s book “Winnie the Pooh”. The title of the project is “While We’re Still Young”, a title that, while similar, evokes a  bittersweet flavour.

Michael Janisch

Patrick Cornelius originally thought that he was going to be writing this suite for his children. He regularly read to his daughter Isabella from "When We Were Very Young". He assumed perhaps with unrealistic altruism that this project would be a musical homage that Isabella and her brother would someday listen to with wonder and appreciation, but as he got into the actual writing, he realized that the idea of creating this music for his kids was a vain fantasy.
 

Phil Robson

Cornelius said, "I wrote for my own childhood; remembering the wonder and spectacle of exploring our big, scary, beautiful world through new eyes. I also wrote for my music influences. For Ellington, Debussy, Evans, and Shorter, yes, but also for my peers; the wealth of talent that exists in the creative music world today, many of which I actually hired to record the music with me." Patrick Cornelius

Andrew Bain

He revels in the bittersweet step between innocence and wisdom. Despite having left the magic and fury of youth in his wake, both personally and musically, Patrick Cornelius finds himself as a parent discovering AA Milne's work again and igniting that spark of that wonder. The message of "While We're Still Young" is that we should all search for that flame of innocent joy in our own lives, remember that feeling of wonder, and try to nurture it as best we can, no matter what our age or life circumstance. 

Alex Garnett

"While We're Still Young" swells the belly in a very English affair, epitomised by 'The Invaders' which is as ripe and dripping as a Vale Of Evesham orchard. It is the rich stain of a summer pudding, the cheap white bread on the outside is slowly discoloured by the rising pink of burgeoning fruit. As the seeping fruit paints its shades of chapped hands to rope burns it finally rests on the lurid bleed of unforgettable sunsets. Don't forget the cream, the double cream, so pure and rich that it can only be balanced by the smarting twang of sour currants, reminding us of the mercurial English summer.

AL.

Steve Hamilton

 

They Might Be Giants - Grapple

John Linnell

They Might Be Giants
John Flansburgh - vocals, guitars, bass, harmonica, programming
John Linnell - vocals, accordion, keyboards, saxophones, programming
Dan Miller - guitar, keyboards, vocals
Danny Weinkauf - bass
Marty Beller - drums
 


Dan Miller

Date - 4th February 2016
Venue - Electric Ballroom, Camden
Current Album - Why?
 
Upcoming shows/gigs
BALTIMORE March 17 http://bit.ly/1kbrl0f
CINCINNATTI March 18 http://bit.ly/1GxvMwU
MILWAUKEE March 19 http://bit.ly/20aLvIB
CHICAGO SOLD OUT
OMAHA March 22 http://bit.ly/1O86Gr0
DENVER March 23 http://bit.ly/1PRuNKY
BERKELEY March 25 http://bit.ly/1P5n2yp GOING FAST
LOS ANGELES SOLD OUT
SAN DIEGO March 27 http://bit.ly/1kbrKQn GOING FAST
TUCSON March 29 http://bit.ly/20aLF2E
AUSTIN Flood Show March 31 http://bit.ly/1RBWpRD
HOUSTON April 1 http://bit.ly/1N8StJ9
NEW ORLEANS April 2 http://bit.ly/1XzqKEm
PENSACOLA April 3 http://bit.ly/1S9RxUI
TAMPA April 5 http://bit.ly/1kbs5CG
ORLANDO April 6 http://bitly/1MtIoaM
ASHEVILLE April 7 http://bit.ly/1iiW6ix
ATLANTA April 8 http://bit.ly/1Hc2jTU GOING FAST
CARRBORO SOLD OUT
PHILADELPHIA April 10 http://bit.ly/1Hc2oHq 
 

Danny Weinkauf

Brooklyn’s very own perpetual-motion machine, They Might Be Giants are releasing their  eagerly awaited follow up to their Grammy-winning Here Come the 123s and the Grammy-nominated Here Comes Science. The idiosyncratic fivesome return to the world of kids stuff with Why? which features a collection of new songs on their 2015 Dial-A-Song re-launch.
 

John Flansburgh

Found Review
(Found in London Evening Standard, 4th February 2016, Page 19, Law student grapples with 'big guys' after laptop is stolen)
 

Grapple with Big Guys

Chased by the throat into adrenaline kick backs
I stood in front of them with my arms stretched wide open
There was just me and the big guys
and around me they drank classics for beer
 

Benet Mclean - Hand for crop

Benet Mclean

Benet Mclean - violin
Julian Joseph - piano
Duncan Eagles - saxophone
Dan Casimir - bass
Clark Tracey - drums



Dan Casimir

Date - 14th January 2016
Venue - 606 Jazz Club, London
Current Album - (playing violin) Partikel - String Theory

Duncan Eagles

Live dates
with Partikel
February 17, 2016 - The Garrick Theatre, London
March 2, 2016 - The Bull's Head, Barnes
March 18, 2016 - Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton
Mar 24, 2016 - The Castle Theatre, Wellingborough
April 3, 2016 - Hotel Hatfield, Lowestoft
Apr 7, 2016 - Ronnie Scott's, London
April 12, 2016 - Dempsey's, Cardiff
April 15, 2016 - Bradford Jazz Club
Apr 26, 2016 - Schmazz, Newcastle
April 27, 2016 - Jazz Bar, Edinburgh
April 29, 2016 - Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline
Apr 30, 2016 - Tolbooth Arts Centre
 May 14, 2016 - The Lighthouse, Deal, Kent
May 29, 2016 - The Hen and Chicken, Bristol
Saturday, July 2, 2016 - Love Supreme Festival

The words of this review come from the Evening Standard, Page 32, January 14th 2016

Julian Joseph

Play the love (viral)

Lover all things deft
Hand for crop, himself faultless

There he is, eyes hooded, chin dropped
cuts himself
A grin with a single candle
He wields a razor, pressing cherubic

Punctured.



Clark Tracey