Reviewed: Aaron Irwin Trio | Brian Molley | Taupe

Aaron Irwin Trio: Spark Brooklyn-based saxophonist, composer and multi-woodwind instrumentalist Aaron Irwin has a distinctive voice that makes connections between jazz, blues and folk-rooted music. Featuring long-time collaborators Mike Baggetta and Bill Campbell, Spark presents a lively collection of 10 Irwin-penned tracks. All of them unfold gently, often with Baggetta setting the scene with quiet guitar chords before Irwin and Campbell layer and amplify the central melody of the songs and build them to a finale. The music manages to be...

Reviewed: NYYS Jazz | Karsten Vogel | Sonny Criss

NYYS Jazz: Lineage This is the second album by The New York Youth Symphony aka NYYS which is an ensemble of 17 remarkably mature musicians...

Reviewed: Lazy Californians | Ted Rosenthal Trio | Daphne Roubini And Black Gardenia

Lazy Californians: Back To San Francisco Frisco-born trumpeter Cameron Washington has close family roots in Louisiana, and a specific interest in the richly diverse musical...

Reviewed: Freddie King | Charlie Wood | Caleb Wheeler Curtis

Freddie King: Feeling Alright – The Complete 1975 Nancy Pulsations Concert I need to watch Freddie King’s spirit-lifting appearance at the Beat ’66 TV-show on...

Mike Westbrook dies

The death is reported of pianist, composer and bandleader Mike Westbrook, aged 90. His manager, Peter Conway, today issued the following notice. Mike Westbrook OBE,...

News in brief...

Christie’s Rare Watches auction in Geneva 11 May includes some Quincy Jones items: a Patek Philippe Nautilus (estimate US$130,000-250,000), a 22 karat gold and diamond-set pendant and chain necklace ($13,000-19,000) and a Girard-Perregaux World Time Control Shadow Model ($6,400-13,000).

Attila Kleb of JazzFest Budapest says he’s been fighting for a real jazz festival, undiluted with “performances by pop and rock stars”. This year, 27 June – 2 July, the city invites such as Pat Metheny, Marcus Miller, Charles Lloyd, Mike Stern and Ravi Coltrane.

Among the soul and pop that dominates the 2026 Love Supreme Jazz Festival in Sussex, 3-5 July (e.g., Temptations, Four Tops and Sister Sledge) is some jazz-related music from such as Bill Frisell, Joe Lovano, Joe Webb and Emma Rawicz.

The fourth MoonJune festival, devised by the indefatigable Leonardo Pavkovic and describing itself as a festival of “eclectic music”, takes place in Teramo, Italy, 22-25 July 2026 and includes Soft Machine w. Gary Husband, Gong w. Steve Hillage and Diego Amador’s Flamenco Free Jazz.

Couleurs Jazz, an ad-free radio service based in Paris that in contrast to notable UK providers plays jazz all the time, is asking for donations. It’s an appeal that will likely to resonate with jazz fans who tune in. All contributions are welcome, but 50€ gets your name on the contributors’ wall.

Reviewed: Alm | Trigg & Gusset | Julius Windisch Immerweiter

Alm: Alm EP Alfred Vogel’s Boomslang Records is nothing if not eclectic, the Austrian label championing everything from free improvisation to contemporary jazz, grooves and...

Reviewed: Mal Waldron | Yusef Lateef | Marilyn Crispell, Anders Jormin

Mal Waldron: Stardust & Starlight: At The Jazz Showcase A previously unissued recording by enigmatic pianist and composer Mal Waldron (1925-2003). It was recorded at...

Reviewed: House Of The Black Gardenia | Cuba – Cha Cha Chá 1950-1962 | Sarah L King

House Of The Black Gardenia: Mazurka In Jazz House of the Black Gardenia is a nonet that delivers hot vintage swing with a contemporary edge....

Duke Ellington’s Symphonic Visions

Luca Bragalini, a musicologist and academic historian, published Duke Ellington’s Symphonic Visions in Italian in 2025. It received plaudits from his fellow critics for...

Reviewed: Cecil McBee | Craig Taborn | Julia Hülsmann Octet | Pasquale Mega PollCroma Ensemble

Cecil McBee: Mutima Bassist Cecil McBee racked up numerous dates as an in-demand sideman to everyone from Chico Freeman and Andrew Hill to Pharoah Sanders...
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Reviewed: Ingrid Jensen | Mateusz Smoczynski | Håkan Broström

Ingrid Jensen: Landings Ingrid Jensen is a Canadian trumpet player much admired in North America as...
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JJ 03/76: Amalgam – Innovation

Fifty years ago, Barry McRae enjoyed John Stevens playing around the beat and Trevor Watts ranging from blistering scalar flurries to gentle thematic variations

JJ 03/86: Tito Puente And His Latin Ensemble – Mambo Diablo

Hace 40 años, Simon Adams estaba de acuerdo en que el diablo tiene todas las mejores melodías y felicitó a Puente por haber convertido Take Five en una canción agradable

JJ 03/76: Dick Wellstood at the Seven Dials

Fifty years ago Miles Kington hailed a proponent of a piano style that 'probably led to the finest flowering of solo improvising since Beethoven'

JJ 03/96: Wayne Shorter, interviewed by Mark Gilbert

Thirty years ago, Mark Gilbert plumbed the familial and musical origins of one of the leading individualists of the modern period

Reviewed: Aaron Irwin Trio | Brian Molley | Taupe

Aaron Irwin Trio: Spark Brooklyn-based saxophonist, composer and multi-woodwind instrumentalist Aaron Irwin has a distinctive voice that makes connections between jazz, blues and folk-rooted music. Featuring long-time collaborators Mike Baggetta and Bill Campbell, Spark presents a lively collection of 10 Irwin-penned tracks. All of them unfold gently, often with Baggetta setting the scene with quiet guitar chords before Irwin and Campbell layer and amplify the...

Reviewed: NYYS Jazz | Karsten Vogel | Sonny Criss

NYYS Jazz: Lineage This is the second album by The New York Youth Symphony aka NYYS which is an ensemble of 17 remarkably mature musicians aged between 15 and 22 years. Their Grammy Award debut release in 2022 was an orchestral album featuring works by Florence Price, Valerie Coleman and Jessie Montgomery. Here they concentrate on the jazz repertoire, interpreting classics of the genre by...
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New releases February-March 2026, W-Z

Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in January-February 2026, including Mal Waldron, Emmanuel Wilkins, Buster Williams, Steve Wilson and Alex Wintz // Editor's pick: Buster Williams

New releases February-March 2026, T-V

Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in January-February 2026, including Taupe, Henri Texier, Mark Turner, McCoy Tyner and Various: Cuba Cha Cha Chá // Editor's pick: Taupe

New releases February-March 2026, N-S

Records offered for review to Jazz Journal in January-February 2026, including NYYS Jazz, People In Orbit, Michel Petrucciani, Soft Machine and Louis Stewart // Editor's pick: People In Orbit

Mike Westbrook dies

The death is reported of pianist, composer and bandleader Mike Westbrook, aged 90. His manager, Peter Conway, today issued the following notice. Mike Westbrook OBE, born 21 March 1936 It is with very great sadness that I announce the death of...

Jacky Terrasson accused of rape

The Franco-American pianist Jacky Terrasson, well known for his work on the Blue Note label, has been accused of raping a six-year-old girl, according to a report published 18 March by France Culture. The alleged offence is said to...
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Trinity Laban settles with Martin Speake over his remarks on jazz and skin colour

Following a two-year dispute the Trinity Laban conservatoire in South London has reached a private settlement with Martin Speake, a former teacher of saxophone at the college who attacked critical race theory and the proposition that the UK jazz...

Unapologetic Expression: The Inside Story Of The UK Jazz Explosion

For a geezer of my vintage the great and most fruitful UK jazz explosion occurred in the late 60s-early 70s, fuelled by South African expats and musicians from the West Country and then, somewhat in contrast, there was the...

Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura: making music never heard before

Stan Getz, Miles Davis, Red Rodney, Corky Corcoran, to pick a few names at random, all began playing professionally in their teens. I remember seeing Betty Carter live back...

Gianluca Pellerito, drum wunderkind

I first encountered drummer Gianluca Pellerito through social media and quickly became one of his 330k followers on Instagram, but it was seeing this...

The dance is ended (but the memory lingers on)

Seeing the Count Basie Orchestra live was one of the great thrills early in my lifelong obsession with jazz. I did not realise it...

Count Me In… 02/26

Oh for a schism, an entertaining rupture in the ranks so that one can watch militants spit venom across a void. Jazz had a famous one at the turn of the 1950s – "la mère de tous les schismes",...

Obituary: Ralph Towner

With the death of Ralph Towner (1940 - 2026) contemporary jazz lost one of its most prolific and distinctive voices. How many musicians can you think of whose work covers the range that Towner explored in the now rippling,...
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JJ 03/96: Wayne Shorter, interviewed by Mark Gilbert

Thirty years ago, Mark Gilbert plumbed the familial and musical origins of one of the leading individualists of the modern period

JJ 03/96: Paula Gardiner – Tales Of Inclination

Thirty years ago, Mark Gilbert welcomed a debut that wrought familiar material - including reminders of ECM, Metheny, Debussy and Grieg - into something fresh and individual

JJ 03/96: Jack Bruce – Monkjack

Thirty years ago, Simon Adams listened to a 'a set of atmospheric, occasionally portentous songs that promise much and sometimes deliver it'