London Jazz Festival, in association with BBC Radio 3, Friday 11 to Sunday 20 November 2011

The Festival is over. We can’t quite believe it. Friday 11 November feels like yesterday. There’s a sense of elation in the office, (combined with tiredness and, on one count, an inability to speak!) as it’s clear for all to see that the 2011 London Jazz Festival has been huge amounts of fun and, from what we can gather, a massive success. 

We've been overwhelmed, and delighted, by the sheer volume of press coverage we've had for the Festival this year. I wish I could list it all, but it’d go on for pages and pages. I’ve selected a (rather large) list of the highlights. It makes for a rather long blog post. But there are so many, it's difficult to choose. I do urge you to read to the end. Bedtime reading perhaps?

“London Jazz Festival, that glorious time of year when more live improvised music can be heard in the bars, clubs and concert halls of the capital than the rest of the year put together.” The Independent

“A ramshackle Old Street basement blazing with incandescent noise comes right after an evening of elegant grand-piano jazz around the corner at the Barbican. Such behaviour is par for the course at the 30-gigs-per-night London jazz festival. It's like iPod-shuffling with live music, only governed by the nimbleness of your legs rather than your thumbs.” The Guardian

“While all those smaller gigs all over the city are important in making the London Jazz Festival representative not only of jazz in the world but in this city, one of the really valuable things LJF can achieve with its backing from Serious and BBC Radio 3, is the presentation of seriously important musicians who have brought so much to this area of music down the years, but whom we don’t get to hear nearly often enough” thejazzbreakfast.com

“Doubters often caricature jazz as an avalanche of notes cascading down a slippery slope of fast-changing chords, with no melodic refuge in sight. The 2011 London Jazz festival has undoubtedly offered some of that in its first week – although mostly of an eloquence that sells the idea even to sceptics – but it has also showcased the timeless virtues of great song-based tunes, embellished by gifted improvisers.” **** The Guardian

Steve Coleman+ Steve Williamson & Pat Thomas, Queen Elizabeth Hall **** Evening Standard
“A musician with the mind of a mathematician, this formidable Chicago altoist opened the London Jazz Festival on Friday with a spellbinding set that systematically elevated basic note-patterns into kaleidoscopic fantasies.” Evening Standard

Jazz Voice*, Barbican, **** The Guardian

McCoy Tyner*, Barbican, ***** The Independent
“This is music that gives out more oxygen than it sucks in – it's giddyingly good.”

Alison Krauss & Union Station*, Royal Festival Hall, *****The Telegraph
“Top-class musicianship, Krauss and Union Station put on one of the most quietly accomplished performances” 

Alison Krauss & Union Station*, Royal Festival Hall, Attitude
“Krauss belied her 40 years with the quality of her voice, an improbably sweet and tender instrument for someone recording music a good 26 years. Between the visual backdrop of Southern States iconography from railroads to wide open spaces and Krauss’s caressing tones, the audience was transported from drizzly old London to a place far more inviting.”

Stefano Bollani & Martial Solal*, Barbican, **** Evening Standard
“Piano duos are rare in contemporary jazz but the unlikely pairing of a dashing young Italian discovery and wise old French-Algerian master worked a treat here. Their mutual respect was there for all to see.” 

Steve Swallow Quintet + The Impossible Gentlemen, Queen Elizabeth Hall
Louis, Barbican
**** The Guardian

Louis, Barbican, London Jazz
“The tremendously varied score, performed by some of the world’s finest jazz musicians, in combination with the wildly inventive silent film, made for an incredible live performance experience!”

Michel Portal, **** The Telegraph
“There was something wonderful in the total accord between him and the Frenchman, compounded of naïve delight, lightning intelligence and tact.” 

Christine Tobin: Sailing to Byzantium, Purcell Room, London Jazz
“Tobin is blessed not only with one of the most affecting and pure-toned voices in the music, but also with an unimpeachable ear for an insinuatingly lovely melody.”

Gwilym Simcock, 606, Jazzwise
“He’s easily the most significant UK jazz pianist to emerge since Django Bates and Julian Joseph.”

Robert Glasper, XOYO, The Arts Desk
“There aren't too many pianists who excite jazz aficionados and hip-hop fans in equal measure. And while it appears increasingly that jazz artists are refusing to be straitjacketed by genre convention, US pianist Robert Glasper is perhaps the prime example of this blurring at the edges.”

Soul Rebels Brass Band, Queen Elizabeth Hall, The Arts Desk
“Funkier than a James Brown bridge, the mighty Soul Rebels Brass Band swung back into town last night and flattened all before them. Possessing that rare combination of serious chops, impeccable stagecraft and down-home soul, they confirmed their position as one of the most explosive live acts on the scene.”

Richard Galliano, Royal Festival Hall, Jazz Journal
"Richard Galliano is a master of the machine, and in the first brief half of this London Jazz Festival set, gave us a solo masterclass in how to play it well."

Abdullah Ibrahim, Wigmore Hall, Jazz Journal
"In this subtle and unshowy way, Ibrahim distilled a lifetime of performances into an exquisite evening."

Gretchen Parlato, Kings Place,  Jazz Journal
“A superb set”

PelBo, Kings Place Jazz Times
“Kristoffer Lo’s tuba is vital to PELbO’s unconventionally attractive presence. Wielding the potentially awkward horn more like a guitar hero than a low brass player, Lo used an array of effects and looping pedals to achieve really striking sounds that ranged from tight bass tones to surreal, psychedelic phase shifts. His ability to create, with such a difficult solo instrument, those unpredictable harmonic layers — while perfectly complementing Hoem’s vocals — is nothing short of brilliant.”

The Necks, Bishopsgate Institute, ***** The Guardian

“The Necks are compared to everything and anything: hypnotic trance; John Coltrane's late rhapsodies; the electric experiments of Miles Davis, the soundscapes of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno; early krautrock, such as Can or Neu! This approach, which transcends jazz without rejecting it, echoed other festival triumphs. But the Necks are the masters.”

Ornette Coleman, Royal Festival Hall, **** Financial Times
“Coleman, now 81, remains committed to creative risk. The grooves were freewheeling and mighty, but fiendish unison bursts, sudden stops and changes of direction revealed organisation within. Coleman sailed and soared, fragile at the edges but with his gospel shouts, downward cascades and extraordinary melodic invention still intact. It was a festival highlight.”

Ornette Coleman, Royal Festival Hall, ***** Jazzwise
The quartet received a big and fully deserved standing ovation. A concert that lived up to every expectation and a fitting way to close a festival that this year pushed artistic boundaries in every way.

Hermeto Pascoal, Barbican, **** The Guardian

Bill Frisell, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Jazz Journal
“With Frisell it feels as though we're finally seeing the logical conclusion of that early homage to rural America. It may yet become his lasting legacy, as it quietly continues to renew and enrich the vocabulary of jazz.”

London Jazz Festival 2011 in pictures, The Guardian

London Jazz Festival on Channel 4 News

Soul Rebels Brass Band on Channel 5

Our team of volunteers, members of Young and Serious and participants of The Write Stuff were also out reviewing gigs, and have sent in reviews in their abdunance. 

Our Festival photographer Emile Holba seemed to cover more ground than ever this year. Perhaps because we filled every spare five minutes of his schedule with a photo op. Dinner? Who needs dinner, when you have jazz, eh? The fruits of his spectacular efforts are available for all to see on Flickr here. Here's a few highlights:

The music from the Festival lives on for the next couple of months, through the broadcasts from BBC Radio 3. We'll keep you updated. Coming up this week:

Fri 25 Nov, Emir Kusturica & The No Smoking Orchestra, World on 3
Sat 26 Nov, Regina Carter & Alyn Shipton, Jazz Library
Sun 27 Nov, McCoy Tyner, Jazz Line-Up

*part of the EFG International Excellence Series