Friday, 25 March 2016

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

 

Wednesday, 23 March 2016

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.



Friday, 18 March 2016

Bird - Hypnotise cut

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.

Thursday, 3 March 2016

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 ArĂȘte 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