BLUE MAQAMS (ECM) 9.5/10 Is this the year’s finest release? It is two decades since the great Tunisian oud player Anouar Brahem last collaborated with jazz musicians on the timeless Thimar. That was with John Surman and Dave Holland, and now Holland returns to the fold in company with drummer…
Category: Album Reviews – Archive
All artists are poachers, thieves and cannibals. They pinch ideas, polish up different facets and call them their own. The malaise into which music of all stripes has been sliding for 30 years is that cannibalising what has gone before is now just about all that happens, with precious few…
JAZZ AT BERLIN PHILHARMONIC – MEDITERRANEO (ACT/Planet) 8.5/10 Collaborations between jazz musicians and orchestras generally flatter neither party. The classical players, who signed on to perform Mozart and Mahler, are reduced to playing lame backgrounds, while the jazz players are straightjacketed by the surrounding inflexibility. This album breaks that mould,…