Category: Features

December 11, 2014 / Features - Archive

Ah, the concept album: the ultimate proof that rock got too big for its boots and needed punk to spit on it until it shrank back to size. The late ’60s and early ’70s was the concept album’s heyday, with Jethro Tull trumping the rest by releasing a 44-minute piece…

November 5, 2014 / Features - Archive

  It was the music she heard each week when her mother was ironing: Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Abbey Lincoln, Miles Davis and more. They seeped into Dee Alexander’s pre-school consciousness and heart and stayed there. So years later, when she took to singing, perhaps it was inevitable…

November 1, 2014 / Features - Archive

Ralph Towner has just been on holiday. To the guitarist this is rather more noteworthy than helping redefine improvised music over the last 45 years by blending jazz, classical and South American elements. “I’m just learning from my wife how to take a vacation without going mad,” the American says…