John Shand Posts

January 9, 2015 / Album Reviews - Archive

Joy In Spite Of Everything (ECM) The title of Easy Healing is perfect: a pick-me-up song riding on a breeze of calypso charm. Stefano Bollani, the exceptional Italian pianist long associated with Enrico Rava, could well have written this with Bill Frisell in mind, so perfectly does the guitarist’s elfin…

December 22, 2014 / Concert Reviews - Archive

The Sound Lounge, December 13 Even music, the most abstract of the arts, can sometimes be too concrete. You can feel it clawing for the spaces between notes and yearning for the tyranny of rhythm to be blurred. The former is impossible on a piano, but not a synthesizer, and…

December 21, 2014 / Album Reviews - Archive

Keith Jarrett/Charlie Haden/Paul Motian: Hamburg ‘72 (ECM/Fuse) Keith Jarrett/Charlie Haden: Last Dance (ECM/Fuse) Jim Black Trio: Actuality (Winter & Winter/Birdland) By the age of two he was singing professionally. “Yodelling Cowboy Charlie”, they called him. That was in the Haden Family Band, a star attraction on the US country music…