Ubuntu Music’s Artists Shine Bright!
Jazz Views: Albums of The Year
Will Glaser and Nigel Price take top honours.
UPCOMING SHOWS: Nigel Price, Brandon Allen & Matt Ridley
London Jazz News: Nigel Price (11 Dec. 2021), Mark Lockheart, Brandon Allen, Matt Ridley and Estraven (early 2022). Concerts at the Hive in Shrewsbury
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Jazzwise Magazine December-January Highlights
Ubuntu Music Artists dominate the year end issue.
ALBUMS OF THE YEAR SELECTIONS
TAKING OFF FEATURE
ALBUM REVIEWS
CONCERT REVIEWS
REVIEW: The Nigel Price Organ Trio - 'Wes Reimagined'
Germany’s Christoph Wurm writes, “It is a stunning achievement. There is nothing imitative or derivative about the record. It stands proudly on its own because the songs have been rearranged, restructured, reinvented, and the playing is superb throughout.”
LIVE REVIEW: NIGEL PRICE BRINGS THE SPIRIT OF WES MONTGOMERY TO A ROCKING SATURDAY NIGHT AT RONNIE SCOTT’S
Jazzwise Magazine’s Peter Jones writes, “The acclaimed guitarist brought the house down with his string-tinged 11-piece take on the music of Wes Montgomery.”
The hardest-working man in showbusiness is no longer James Brown but our very own Nigel Price: online jazz guru, saviour of the Swanage Jazz Festival, single-handed organiser of multiple huge tours of the UK, nominated for the 2021 Parliamentary Jazz Award for Best Ensemble – and an accomplished guitarist too. So it was hardly surprising that he not only sold out Ronnie Scott’s for both Saturday night shows, but brought ten musicians on stage, including a string quartet, and went 15 minutes over time at the end of the first show. Inexplicably, this was the first time in 600 gigs at “Jazz HQ” that he’s played the main room under his own name.
The occasion was the launch of Price’s much-lauded Wes Reimagined album (Ubuntu Music), on which he gives each Montgomery composition a twist and sends it off in a whole new direction. Hence the slow, sleepy ‘Leila’ was injected with a double-shot of adrenaline and turned into an upswing rampage. ‘Far Wes’ became a waltz, on which organist and long-time collaborator Ross Stanley demonstrated his mastery of nudge and nuance, whisper and swell. And ‘Jingles’, a hip, syncopated Wes-defining tune if ever there was one, mutated into an energetic samba, enlivened further by a terrific rhythm battle between drummer Joel Barford and percussionist Snowboy.
As Price pointed out, Wes Montgomery had a lot to do with bringing latin and funk styles into the mainstream jazz repertoire. The premise of both the album and the gig therefore made a lot of sense: to use the tools that the great man left us. And it wasn’t always a question of kicking everything into a higher gear: the joyful ‘So Do It’ became what Price introduced as “a depressing downtempo bolero.” In fact, it was more like more a gorgeous Henry Mancini cheese-fest. The night ended with Tony Kofi (alto) and Vasilis Xenopoulos (tenor) trading licks with guest Callum Au (trombone) on the closer ‘Cariba!’, done as a funky shuffle, sweetened yet further by the young string quartet Phonograph Effect Strings.
REVIEW: Nigel Price Organ Trio - 'Wes Reimagined'
Hi-Fi News and record Review writes, “(Nigel Price is) a great British guitarist here at his very best.”
Ubuntu Artists in August's Sandy Brown Jazz
Another fine showing for these talented individuals.
Ubuntu Music in June's Jazzwise Magazine
Another great representation of Ubuntu artists.
Nigel Price / Takes 5
Nigel Price / Live Dates
Charting the Jazz Message
Jacky Naylor / Taking Off
Roy Mor Album Review
Gig Guide
Three Ubuntu Artists Selected by jazzwise Magazine as Best Albums of 2021 (so far)
These outstanding albums were reviewed in the 2021 issues of Jazzwise and all were selected as Editor's Choice.
The new release from Japanese pianist Yoko Miwa has an appealing lockdown title. Who couldn’t do with a little joy right about now? And this 11-cut disc certainly delivers on its titular promise. The recording comes out of Miwa’s response to the pandemic, which, the Berklee professor explains, was to compose every day. Accordingly there are five new originals, paired with six covers. ‘The one emotion that unites all the songs is one of JOY,’ Miwa says, not at all misleadingly: there’s a splendid, irrepressible energy about these tracks... Robert Shore
This completes an unusual trilogy of releases, following Glaser’s duo albums with saxophonist Matthew Herd, then pianist Liam Noble on Climbing in Circles Part 1 and 2, whose near identical tracklists tried to tease out how players’ personalities impact material. The MO is loosened here, letting the combined trio relax into musical friendship, playing covers and originals. ‘Mood Indigo’ is dismantled for inspection, in a thankfully less extreme version of Douglas Gordon’s Hitchcock art installation deconstruction 24 Hour Psycho, as Noble slows and delays the melody, only to find it indestructible. Nick Hasted
Nigel Price (g), Tony Kofi (as), Vasilis Xenopoulos (ts), Ross Stanley (org), Joel Barford (d), Snowboy (perc), Callum Au (arr, tb), plus the Phonograph Effect Strings: Kay Stephen, Anna Brigham (vn), Elitsa Bogdanova (vla) and Chris Terepin (clo). Rec. 7-8 September, 30 September, 20 October 2020
As its title implies, this is Price looking afresh at compositions by his hero Wes Montgomery, and re-casting them in ways that he feels Wes might well have considered. Or welcomed. Add to that, Price’s decision to enlist Au to create discrete string arrangements for three of the 10 numbers and then to enlist Snowboy to splice in percussion effects, and you can see that this surpasses anything else that he has done up to now. Peter Vacher