Isabel Sörling of Soil Collectors, playing at Match and Fuse Festival this month
15–16 October,Hackney Wonderland@ Oval Space, The Laundry, London Fields Brewery, Sebright Arms, The Pickle Factory
Five venues play host to a line-up of established bands such as Mystery Jets and We Are Scientists as well as up-and-coming acts like singer Sonia Stein and NGod.
21–23 October –Stoke Newington Music Festival @ various venues including Mascara Bar, St Pauls Church West Hackney, The Waiting Room, Haunt, Stereo92, The Lion, The Lacy Nook, Green Room Café, The Haberdashery
Three-day multi-venue event across Stoke Newington will see DJ sets and live music from the likes of Thurston Moore, Sterling Roswell, Pink Cigar and The Pacers
One of the nation’s best loved comic creations Super Hans from Peepshow (aka Australian comic Matt King) takes to the decks for his debut London DJ set.
Organisers boast this will be a “knees up like no other”, bringing together musicians from 14 European countries. Highlights include Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva and the Native American/Scandinavian pop improvisers the Soil Collectors.
29 October – Mirrors festival @ St John at Hackney, Moth Club, Oslo, Round Chapel
Eyes will be on the Mercury Prize-nominated Bat for Lashes, who is set to headline this one-day indoor festival. Also on the line-up are Allah-Las, Bill Ryder Jones and the curiously-named garage punk six-piece Diarrhea Planet.
Following Skepta’s Mercury Prize win, 2016 could be seen as the the year that grime came of age.
Grime isn’t just about music: for a whole generation, this is a definitive lifestyle and culture. Back in Bow in the early 2000s, however, the artists who would go on to be considered as the founding fathers of grime weren’t expecting much.
Though it seems almost surreal to think of them in this way now, most of grime’s big names were just school friends in East London’s council estates, messing about in their free time.
With This Is Grime journalist Hattie Collins allows for a fascinating, unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the musical revolution that has defined a generation.
It is an impressive compilation of interviews with the key figures involved and, of course, there’s no one better equipped to be telling the story of the scene than the people at the centre of it all (especially given that Collins speaks to fellow journalists too, allowing for a degree of outsider commentary).
In many ways it’s more of a sourcebook than anything: you can imagine in all future think-pieces and books on grime, This Is Grime will provide a wealth of the references and key quotes.
Stormzy. Photograph: Olivia Rose
The book intimately charts the timeline of grime: born out of jungle raves and pirate radio, and the years that saw it rising to its current dominant state, via backlash, violence, and mainstream recognition.
There’s conversations with some of the up and coming names in the scene alongside the hallowed fathers Wiley, Dizzee and Kano. And, of course, there’s a look into the sensational rise of the Adenuga family (aka Skepta, JME and Julie).
The accompanying photographs – taken exclusively for the book by Olivia Rose – are wonderfully atmospheric, and add to the visceral nature in which the story is told.
In allowing the book to be told solely by the interviewees, Collins has allowed for a refreshing open-endedness at some points: for example, at the beginning of the book many MCs and producers say that grime could never have happened without the UK garage scene, which heavily inspired it.
For others, grime was more of an aggressive reaction to the perceived pomposity of garage.
Birthplace of grime: East London. Photograph: Olivia Rose
Like the music itself, things aren’t sugar-coated in the book: the artists don’t shy away from the reality of stabbings and disaffected youth. In the past, UK politicians have voiced an unease with the style, fearing a glorification of violence (though is hard to not consider this fear as at least slightly racially motivated).
But the artists make the valid point that grime was born out of their reality: that the music gains its raw energy in channelling those aggressions.
Crazy Titch, in his taking down of garage, points out that the scene was unrelatable: rather than songs about champagne and fancy cars, grime was the not-always pleasant truth about the ends they all grew up in.
The interview-style of the book does at points make you want some actual narrative from someone not at the centre of it all, and at times you even crave a documentary: it can feel the equivalent of reading a script rather than getting to watch the play.
Overall, though, it’s a wonderful, intricate snapshot of an immensely important movement in British culture. It perhaps doesn’t offer much to those without a basic awareness of the scene, but for most who are interested in the story, This Is Grime has a lot to offer.
In a musical landscape largely dominated by beige pop, grime has injected the sound of something other into the British scene: something exciting, different, and completely local.
This Is Grime captures the thrill and disbelief driving the movement so far, and is endearing in its candid insights into the past decade.
What makes the book particularly exciting is the knowledge that there’s still plenty to come from the scene. To quote JME: “It’s only the end of the beginning.”
Novelist, Footsie and D Double E. Photograph: Olivia Rose
(l-r): Dan Leavers, Shabaka Hutchings and Max Hallett as jazz three-piece The Comet is Coming. Photograph: Fabrice Bourgelle
The story of The Comet is Coming is the stuff of dreams for aspiring bands: a serendipitous meeting of musical minds and an album, thrown together out of sheer enthusiasm and a series of creative epiphanies, that propelled the East London-based group into the national spotlight. Last weekend the cosmic jazz trio, fronted by charismatic sax-player Shabaka Hutchings (aka King Shabaka), played a headline set to a delighted crowd at a rain-soaked Chatsworth Road festival. Tonight, the group’s debut album Channel the Spirits will be up against the likes of David Bowie and Radiohead for the coveted Mercury Prize. Max Hallett (aka Betamax Killer) is the group’s drummer, as well as a composer and production guru. The 31-year-old here talks about musical experiments, why Hackney is still the place to be for artists and how space is “a blank canvas of imagination”.
Channel the Spirits was written and recorded in Hackney. How has working in the borough shaped your music?
I’ve been living in and around Hackney for about 10 years and I think there is a kind of edginess to the art that’s created here, though probably that was more so a few years back. People travel in from all round to go there and make stuff. I live further east now in Forest Gate but we all travel in because it’s still the place to get stuff done really. We’ve got a studio space in Stoke Newington in a place called the Total Refreshment Centre. It’s kind of our ‘HQ’, and is where we recorded the album. It used to be a Jamaican community centre I think but now it’s a recording and rehearsing space. They used to do a lot of parties and gigs there too and there’s lots of bands and artists going through there all the time so it’s part of a little scene really.
How did the band form and what brings you guys together musically?
Me and the keyboard player Dan [Dan Leavers, aka Danalogue the Conqueror] were already in a band called Soccer96 and have been playing together since we were at university. We did this gig and Shabaka came along with his saxophone. He’d been coming to a couple of our gigs and just showed up and jumped up on stage towards the end of the gig. We started playing and it unleashed this really big energy onstage. It was quite serene and then afterwards we were like, ‘okay, we need to go in the studio.’
And you recorded the album then and there?
Yeah, without doing any more gigs really we just went into the studio to do something that became the album. At the beginning we didn’t even know it was going to be a band. We just started recording. So the album is really the beginning of the band, because the album and last year’s EP (Prophecy) were taken from the same sessions.
Can you talk me through the making of the album?
Me and Dan had already started producing our own sound in the studio using reel to reel recording and a lot of improvising. We were just perfecting this method when we met Shabaka so he just sort of walked into this process. We must have written and recorded the album in about six days, then Dan and I mixed it in my garden shed during the winter. We tend to write whilst mixing too so we added a lot of laser sounds and some recordings from space. We just tried to fill it with interesting sounds from start to finish basically.
How surprised were you to receive a nomination for the Mercury Prize?
We were doing a gig in Portugal when we heard about it. We had a vague idea something was going on, and then Shabaka got a phone call and went outside. We started joking saying maybe that’s the Mercury nomination – and it was. So we just went straight down to the beach and went swimming in the sea. It was a really nice day and there was a really amazing vibe.
A lot of people are talking of The Comet is Coming and making comparisons with the world music pioneer Sun Ra. Do you think that’s fair?
I think everyone would agree that Sun Ra sounds very different to what we do. But because he used space and themes of space and created a mythology for himself, he has been quite inspiring. As soon as we realised this was going to be a spacy project it suddenly opened our creativity to a new direction and everything made perfect sense. We were kind of freed from our own culture in a way and reimagining our whole world at this point. Another thing is that Sun Ra’s band, the Sun Ra Arkestra, is still going and Shabaka is actually a member of that group. So he’s had some guidance from those guys as well – there’s a personal connection on his part.
Shabaka Hutchings has said that the thing that unites you three is the “knowledge that we’re in space”. Could you talk a bit more about this and what it is about space and the cosmos that inspires you?
Space is like a blank canvas of imagination really, because there are so many things that we don’t really understand or haven’t discovered. That’s kind of how our musical journey has been. The studio became our space mission, and it sounds cheesy but space taught us to use the equipment a bit like a science experiment. We’ve been trying to reconnect with music as a form of science. Science and music and spirituality at one point were all the same thing. They’ve branched out into different meanings, but I guess we’re trying to bring them back together and explore them and understand they were once just one idea.
What’s you own musical background?
I’m from a musical family – my parents are both musicians, so yeah I studied piano and met Dan at Sussex University where we both studied composition. But we got more into a beatnik kind of vibe and started going a bit more experimental. We all play in a lot of different bands around London because on a practical level it’s very healthy to be in a lot of bands because you get more experience, and also you have more work.
As serial collaborators how do you rate London’s alternative jazz scene – is it in good health?
Yeah, I’d say. Particularly in Hackney and parts of South London. But I think there’s a certain vibe of jazz music that has been collected within another scene. Basically there’s so much overlap of the genres that you’re starting to blur all the boundaries. I think in places like Hackney you can see that happen a lot, jazz musicians playing with non-jazz musicians.
Are you going to carry on making music together as a three-piece?
We’ve got another EP that we’ve already finished that will be coming out early next year, and there’s also been talks of maybe making a second album, which I think the label people are kind of keen on. But yeah, I’m sure we’ll try to continue making more experiments.
Never before have Japanese noise musician Merzbow, Hungarian drummer Balázs Pándi, Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson and Sonic Youth great Thurston Moore performed live together. Or at least until now. The four solo artists released acclaimed ‘avant album’ Cuts of Guilt, Cuts Deeper last year. And this month they are set to perform it live for the first time at St John at Hackney.
28 September St John at Hackney, Lower Clapton Road, E5 0PD stjohnsessions.co.uk
South London three-piece The Invisible will be at Oslo this month, playing songs from their impressive third album Patience. The group have defined their music as ‘experimental genre-spanning spacepop’ with front-man Dave Okumu’s impressive CV including production credits for the likes of St Vincent and Amy Winehouse.
Vintage clothes boutique Paper Dress Vintage is to host a night of live music in aid of Central London Samaritans this month. Indie rockers Belle Roscoe and singer-songwriters Will Connor and Nadia Rae are confirmed for the fundraising event, with some ‘very special guests’ yet to be announced…
Hairy Hands, the moniker of electronic musician James Alexander Bright, will be playing a free gig at the Sebright Arms this month for the launch of his album Magic. If the rest of the album is anything like single ‘YNA’ then expect watery synths, liquid funk and sultry melodies.
21 September Sebright Arms 31–35 Coate Street, E2 9AG
Opera Cabaret
Mezzo-sopranos Lore Lixenberg and Lucy Stevens will be performing songs and arias by baroque maestro Henry Purcell at The Old Church this month. The Opera Cabaret describes itself “a spectacular celebration of music and fun”and will feature Elizabeth Marcus on harpsichord.
Music for a While 10 September The Old Church, Stoke Newington Church Street, N16 9ES theoldchurch.org.uk
Nao: “Vocal acrobatics and flair…” Photograph: Jeff Hahn
The story of Nao is not one of overnight success. The 28-year-old East Londoner this year released her debut album For All We Know to some acclaim, with critics hailing her vocal acrobatics and flair in taking the sounds of her old school idols and bringing them up to date. But in contrast to the fame-hungry, manufactured stars of today, the rise to prominence of Nao (née Neo Jessica Joshua) is the result of years of hard work. She has been gigging since the age of 14, studied jazz at music school and been a session vocalist for the likes of Jarvis Cocker and Kwabs. Here she talks about East London sounds, the joy of jamming and ‘wonky funk’…
You grew up and live in East London. How does that come through in your music?
East London has always been a hub for fresh and original music. When I was growing up in my teenage years we were listening to pirate radio stations and grime crews like Heartless Crew and Pay as U Go. They were all people who weren’t signed and were just on the hustle and I think that influenced me in following my own nose. It made me think, ‘I love making music so I’m just going to get on the grind and hope that one day it works out.’ It’s beginning to.
And your recording studio is on Ridley Road, home of the famous market. Do you find inspiration there for your music amongst the market stalls and traders?
I love hustle and bustle and Ridley Road definitely has that. When I’ve been in the studio working without windows or people for a long time I’ve started going out in Dalston, clubbing a little bit just to let my hair down. And I was hearing all these new tunes that people were getting down to and I was like ‘ when did this music come out?’ So it helps me keep up to date with new music that’s for sure.
It’s been a rollercoaster couple of years for you, from your first EP in 2014 to a MOBO nomination, playing Glastonbury twice, coming third in BBC’s Sound of 2016 poll and now a debut album under your belt. How are you coping with the success?
Well I’m not Adele so I don’t get mobbed down the street but it’s definitely a new path for me. I’m realistic though. I understand stuff goes up and stuff comes down and that with the music business you can’t really hold your self-esteem to it because it’s fickle. So I just make music because I love it though obviously I want other people to enjoy it too.
Does the fact you’ve been gigging since you were 14 make you appreciate this all the more?
Yeah, 100 per cent. I’ve been gigging most of my life around London and around the world actually and when I was doing those shows I was a voice of other people’s projects, a singer just floating around. But it did teach me about stage presence, about performing and it taught me about how to be a professional and I learnt my craft trying to be good vocalist. I appreciate that all those years have helped me in my late 20s hopefully be at a good standard.
You worked with some well-respected producers on For All We Know (Grades, A.K. Paul, Loxe, John Calvert) yet there’s something quite homespun about it, like the inclusion of voice memos. What was the rationale there?
You’re right, it’s definitely not all that polished. I recorded all the vocals in my cupboard at home and sometimes you can hear a train going past because I live by the train tracks. There’s a couple of voice memos in there, one in front of a song called Happy and another straight afterwards. And that’s basically an insight into how that song came about. When I make music I leave my phone recording for hours because you never know what you’re going to come up with. So I was recording me and my friends jamming around and we started to form the bass line and then you can hear the chorus developing. I just wanted to show that it’s not about being in the studio with Pharrell, it’s about sitting with people you’re comfortable with, jamming it out and finding a song within that beautiful moment.
You studied vocal jazz at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which suggests to me you’ve always been very serious about a career in music. When did you realise it was something you wanted to do full-time?
I knew I wanted to be a musician from very young, but not from watching Popstars on TV – there was something about dancing around in a video didn’t click for me. Some of the musicians I love are pretty old school, like Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin. They’re amazing musicians and that’s why I went to the Guildhall to study jazz because it was all about musicianship, and I got to compose for orchestras and arrange for like big bands and things like that. Hopefully throughout the album you can hear strong musicianship because that’s what I’ve always wanted to get across.
You’ve described your particular type of music as ‘wonky funk’. What does that mean and why have you felt the need to invent your own genre?
Well a lot of people connect me to R&B and I see R&B as quite a particular thing. It’s quite smooth, it’s quite silky, it’s quite… I don’t know, it’s quite sexual sometimes. But I feel with my music there are so many colours in there: there’s funk, there’s R&B, there’s electronic future music in there. It’s just an amalgamation of all the things I grew up listening to, so for all those people putting me into one bracket because I don’t sound like Usher I just made up my own genre. The funk I take from people like Prince and Michael Jackson who I love and the ‘wonkiness’ is my own interpretation for the moment that we live in. My music doesn’t sound retro, it doesn’t sound like it’s recorded in the 70s, it sounds new I hope, it sounds contemporary.
For All We Know is out now on Little Tokyo Recordings
Whirling dervish: Meshk Ensemble are to perform at the Barbican as part of the Transcender weekend
The Barbican’s Transcender weekend has become a firm favourite in London’s contemporary music events calendar over the past few years.
Returning next month for its eighth edition, the four-day concert series aims to explore the many different facets inherent to transcendental music from across the globe.
This year’s event features musicians from Morocco, France, UK, Iran, Turkey and the United States.
It will open at Milton Court Concert Hall with two contrasting performances.
The Master Musicians of Jajouka have been performing their unique folk music for generations, but first came to prominence in the West after much promotion from artists such as Brian Jones and Ornette Coleman.
The Master Musicians will be followed by Marouane Hajji, a vocalist from Fes, who performs devotional songs in the Sufi tradition.
The Moroccan theme is carried through into the second day – this time at LSO St Luke’s – with an exclusive collaboration between British electronic producer, James Holden, and Mâalem Houssam Guinia – a leading musician of the Gnawa music tradition.
This collaboration will be mirrored by another, that between Étienne Jaumet, Sonic Boom and Céline Wadier, all of whom will be paying a drone-induced tribute to American composer, La Monte Young.
Electronic music maestro: James Holden
Saturday will see the focus shift onto the Barbican Hall for a double bill that reflects on the different aspects of the Persian poet and scholar, Rumi.
The Iranian singer, Parisa, who last performed in London over ten years ago, will be bringing a fresh, lyrical approach to Rumi’s mystical poems.
Turkey’s Meshk Ensemble will follow suit with their ritualised interpretation of the sema ceremony, put to revived compositions from the Mevlevi repertoire. Directed by Timuçin Çevikoglu, this will be the ensemble’s UK debut.
The festival will close on Sunday night with a rare performance by Texan duo, Stars of the Lid. They will be combining their highly processed ambient tones with intricate lighting and animated projections.
Texan duo: Stars of the Lid
Speaking to Barbican’s Contemporary Music Programmer, Chris Sharp, I asked what he looked for when putting on an event as eclectic as Transcender. “The whole idea was to try and juxtapose different musical traditions and suggest that there are connections between them,” he said.
“For example, the common human impulse – to escape the everyday and move into a place where time slows down – has been central within religious music, going back hundreds of years, if not longer.
“A lot of contemporary music, from club-based electronic music to stoner rock, explores similar ideas around repetition and gradual change. We try and distribute our attention around the world. This year there is quite a lot of Moroccan music, which we haven’t done in the past.
“And at the same time, we’re looking for interesting collaborations between contemporary artists who have different approaches to music making.”
Transcender 29 September – 2 October Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS barbican.org.uk
Sarah Yaseen of Rafiki Jazz. Photograph: Ayse Balko
Sound artist Graham Dunning. Photograph: Alex Zalewska
While most people will use the Great British summer as an opportunity to get their skin burnt at an overpriced rooftop bar or see an auspicious indie band blast their way through a muddy festival, there is no shortage of good stuff happening in North East London.
On Thursday 15 July, New River Studios hosted ‘Fractal Meat Live’, an album-launch-cum-radio-broadcast, which showcased sonic experimentations of global proportions. This event was organised by Graham Dunning, a local sound artist who also presents the ‘Fractal Meat On A Spongy Bone’ radio programme on NTS.
The gig began with Me, Claudius, a part-Welsh, all Female electro-dub outfit, who make grating folk music. They were followed by Justin Paton, an avid fan of squelchy synthesisers, whose trademark sound is good ol’ fashioned acid house. The former sounded like a tortured KLF who have had their trademark tangy samples confiscated from them, while the latter locked into imperfect wonky dance grooves that made the walls sweat.
I caught up with Dunning after Paton’s set. He told me that ‘Fractal Meat…’ began its life three-and-a-half years ago, while NTS was still dominated by club DJs promoting their own nights. The station wanted to broaden its output and approached him with an open-ended brief. “They wanted to bring experimental music, electronic music and sound art together,” Dunning explained. “So, that’s a pretty broad spectrum, but I would play stuff the other shows weren’t covering.” Perhaps it’s appropriate then, that the show’s name originates from Paul Hegarty’s 2007 book on sound art, Noise/Music: A History.
Heading back, once again, into the cavernous depths of New River Studios, we were treated to the subtle, melancholic improvisations of Far Rainbow. This electronics and drums duo make music that resembles crackling tinfoil riding an errant wind. There are tepid waves and scenes of a damp, night-time London projected in the background, drawing parallels between the loneliness of both vistas.
The last act I managed to catch before setting off for the night bus home was a collaborative set between Steph Horak and Tom Richards. Richards was launching his new cassette, ‘Selected Live Recordings 2013-16’, on the Fractal Meat Cuts label. Horak also features on this album. Using re-purposed and outmoded electronic devices in tandem with custom built modular systems, Richards creates bleak, but elastic atmospherics. To counter his “heavily textured, polyrhythmic improvisations” Horak works with rule-based compositional methods, which include modulating her voice using software and effects. Horak and Richard’s collaboration was dark, but full of energy.
Before heading home, I managed to catch Dunning once again and asked what he looks for when putting on an event like this: one that is a tape label, radio programme and sound art gig all-in-one. “Lots of like-minded people having a good time,” he answered. Fair enough. And with that, I went into the stifling summer night.
Lost or Gone is the debut EP from Belfast-born local singer-songwriter Aislinn Logan. Logan has been getting her name out since well before the release of this EP in early June, with support slots for singer-songwriters Frank Turner and Ben Marwood, as well as regular airplay on BBC Radio Scotland.
Structurally, Lost or Gone is of definitive folk and singer-songwriter stock – simple chord progressions overlain with more complex melodic hooks. However the actual sound of her music is made far more multifaceted through her use of percussion and electronic noise.
Opening track ‘Wild’ moves from a frothing, ambient intro into lavish piano and wickedly rhythmic drum sequences, with Logan’s voice exuding all the freshness of a spring morning.
‘Iron Wax’ is not as ambitious as its predecessor, simpler and slower, comprising a modest voice and guitar dynamic that renders it much starker in contrast, but places Logan’s vocals at the forefront.
‘Poison’ is a return to the atmospheric instrumentals found on ‘Wild’, with the bass coming through as murky and sweet as a slow jam. Final track ‘Flying Kites’ is another that seems a bit more callow, but it remains richly layered and full-bodied, with little pockets of roughness that sees it gambolling between smooth production and raw bedroom-style recording.
Whilst Lost or Gone finds its roots firmly in folk, Logan has clearly drawn on more electronic influences to craft an intriguing first outing that circumvents the traditional tropes of the genre.
With work beginning on her second EP, it’ll be interesting to see how far she can push this rather postmodern take on popular folk.
Cult following: The Black Lips at a Fluffer Records pit party. Photograph: Carla Salvatore
Fluffer Records started out as a pub conversation but is slowly developing a bit of a cult following in East London.
This independent label promotes local rock and roll, and helped the likes of Virgin Kids get signed with US label Burger Records.
But for those in the know, Fluffer is the architect of the chaotic ‘pit parties’ held in secret locations, where bands play in the centre of the room with the crowd surrounding them 360 degrees.
In May, Hackney Wick venue Shapes hosted the biggest pit party to date. Ten bands played a one-day festival, with The Black Lips jetting in from Atlanta to headline.
With the stage in the centre, the PA system consisted of four speakers running around its perimeter. Support came from East London-based Japanese expats Bo Ningen, a beguilingly facetious Spanish group The Parrots, and Heck, a stage-diving, thrash-metal four-piece from Nottingham.
The drinks were expensive, the music was loud and cathartic. And the audience got into the mood with moshing, punching inflatable fruit, attempted stage invasions and giant panda costumes.
The Black Lips have a reputation for energetic and raucous shows, with stage invasions and drunken nudity not uncommon. Pulling off a gig like this required diplomacy, as both band and venue were concerned things could get out of hand. But on this occasion their set was a relatively civil, albeit sweaty, affair.
Dancing to Heck at Shapes. Photograph: Carla Salvatore
Last month I spoke to label boss Al Brown after Fluffer’s DJ set at Field Day. I was curious to find out if the carnivalesque atmosphere of their pit parties was intentional.
“The fans are part of the performance,” he confirmed. “Because, let’s face it, the more energy you get off the fans and the more people watching, the better the bands tend to play. It’s all part of the same puzzle and both feed off each other.”
New River Studios, in Manor House, held the most recent Fluffer pit party of the summer, on 18 June.
With Chichester’s Traams headlining the bill, it was a more modest affair, though equally as rewarding. You could stand behind the drummer and watch the sweat roll off his back as he kept time to energetic garage rock.
As the sun began to set in Victoria Park and PJ Harvey took to the stage, Al Brown would not be drawn into revealing details of future parties, though it seems likely that something will be offing soon.
“If people carry on coming, then we’ll keep putting [the parties] on,” he confirmed. Perhaps by next year, Fluffer will have a Field Day stage of its own.
A three-day musical extravaganza at the Vortex this month will celebrate the legacy of jazz legend Jelly Roll Morton on the 75th anniversary of his death.
The Tower Hamlets-based Grand Union Orchestra will be hosting a range of eclectic performances that reflect the depth and breadth of sounds of London’s musical landscape.
The performances will be inspired by New Orleans jazz but, as ever with the Grand Union Orchestra, retain a ‘world music’ twist.
The weekend of music begins on the evening of Friday 8 July with a world jazz compilation called Bengal Tiger, Shanghai Dragon, which is built around ancient Chinese court music, Indian classical ragas and Bengali traditional song.
Then, the following day, Latin African jazz will take centre stage in African Shores To The New World. On the trumpet will be South African Claude Deppa, one of the UK’s most influential jazz musicians, with Tony Kofi, winner of the 2008 BBC Jazz awards for best instrumentalist and Harry Brown on the trombone. Together their African and Latin rhythms will aim to tell the story of the Caribbean and USA during the slave trade.
The closing show on Sunday 10 July will feature the voice of Maja Rivic in The Diamond King and the Voodoo Queen. The house band will lead the festivities to an end with songs composed by Grand Union Orchestra chief Tony Haynes to celebrate the lives of other legendary jazzbos, from Buddy Bolden to Charlie Parker.
Haynes explains: “The whole weekend is going to be a collaboration of culture and music, as well as celebrating the legacy of Jelly Roll Morton, the self proclaimed ‘inventor of Jazz’ on the 75th anniversary of this death – we warmly welcome everyone to be a part of it.”
The orchestra will also be holding free workshops for the musically-inclined as part of the Dalston Music Festival.
