CMU Reviews @ London Jazz Festival Festival Reviews

Festival Review: London Jazz Festival 2010

By | Published on Monday 22 November 2010

London Jazz Festival

So, another successful London Jazz Festival drew to a close last night. With nearly 300 gigs over ten days spread across more than 60 venues, this is increasingly becoming one of the capital’s most important music events. And with nearly a third of the gigs being free, not to mention the fringe talks and workshops and Radio 3’s coverage, the Jazz Festival is reaching out to an ever bigger audience, which has to be a good thing.

As with most jazz festivals, the old guard were out in force, notably Sonny Rollins, aged 80, who played a lively two hour single set at the Barbican on Saturday without showing any signs of fatigue, Cedar Walton, who played three consecutive nights at Ronnie Scott’s from Monday to Wednesday, and Herbie Hancock, who performed at the Royal Festival Hall. Age seems no barrier to quality and this festival demonstrated that a large number of musicians whose peak periods of creativity were the 1960s and 1970s are still on good form.

But the festival also brought into focus the number of capable young jazz bands that are operating in London today, like the George Crowley Quartet, BFG and The Moss Project, all proof that the youth of the London scene are starting to thrive.

A running theme this year was the variety of music coming from brass bands in the UK. Calum Gourlay and Freddie Gavita’s big band outfit is reworking the old big band format with promising results, Brass Jaw are pioneering a new approach with their all-brass quartet, and Brassroots are showing how wind instruments can blow up a storm with their heaving live sets of pop covers. Meanwhile the Brassroots organised day of brass bands the weekend before last in Shoreditch was simply awesome.

Finally, there were more comments this year about the diversity of music included under the jazz umbrella by the Festival’s programmers. As the jazz genre continues to expand its horizons, it seems any type of music with a loose structure and some level of improvisation can be included in the programme. Some purists may object, but I like this. It was certainly good news for those lucky enough see artists like Adriano Adewale at the Royal Albert Hall cafe consort and Buena Vista Social Club violinist, Omar Puente, who played on the Barbican Freestage yesterday, neither of them traditional jazz acts, but both brilliant additions to the capital’s jazz fest. HH

Check out gig by gig reviews from this year’s Jazz Festival here.



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