Latest stories
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Samara Joy on Sarah Vaughn and the thrill of live performance
27th Jul 2021
We caught up with rising jazz vocal talent Samara Joy to discuss her new album, live performance and early influences.
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Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo's Cubano-Bop
5th Jul 2021
The combination of Dizzy Gillespie's bebop with Chano Pozo's Cuban rhythms made for some of the most exciting big band music ever recorded. Matt looks into the story behind these classic cuts.
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Veronica Swift - This Bitter Earth
19th Mar 2021
Vocalist Veronica Swift's second record with Mack Avenue tackles some much wider-spread themes such as sexism, racism and misinformation on her excellent follow-up to 2019's Confessions.
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Grammy Winners 2021
15th Mar 2021
Matt introduces the winning jazz albums from this year's ceremony, which took place last night in Los Angeles.
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Stan Getz & João Gilberto
2nd Mar 2021
American saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian guitarist/vocalist João Gilberto's collaborative record, Getz/Gilberto is a classic cool jazz recording that helped bring the sounds of bossa nova to an international audience.
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Red Garland - Groovy
2nd Feb 2021
Red Garland was amongst many fine bebop pianists to be overshadowed by titans like Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, so it's time he got a bit of attention, as we revisit his 1957 classic Groovy.
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Billie Holiday - Lady in Satin
10th Dec 2020
Billie Holiday was just a couple months away from her 43rd birthday when she entered Columbia Records’ 30th Street Studio on February 18, 1958 to record her troubled late masterpiece Lady in Satin, as heart-breaking today as it was then.
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Dave Brubeck - Lullabies
27th Nov 2020
Josh enjoys Dave Brubeck's final studio recording, an intimate set of Lullabies for solo piano, expressing his deep love for his family.
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Bill Frisell - Valentine
21st Aug 2020
Bill Frisell's new record gives us the most succinct version of the veteran guitarist's recent sound to date, in a stripped-down trio format. However, there's still plenty to enjoy with this familiar sound.
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Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book
27th Jul 2020
Ella Fitzgerald’s take on classic Cole Porter tunes served not only as the beginning of the now-legendary Verve Records, but a springboard for the singer that reinvigorated her mid-career.
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Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book
Ella Fitzgerald
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Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown
29th Jun 2020
Josh appreciates the brilliant chemistry between vocalist Sarah Vaughan and trumpeter Clifford Brown on the singer’s eponymous record.
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Ornette Coleman
21st Nov 2019
Ornette Coleman's reputation as the man who broke jazz often gets in the way of some of the most celebratory music of any age, which continues to communicate 60 years on.
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Teddy Wilson
24th Oct 2019
Teddy Wilson was the definitive pianist of the swing era, an artist who appeared on many great recordings from the 1930s through to the 1970s. This week Matt focuses on Wilson's ebullient recordings made after the American recording ban was lifted in 1944.
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Erroll Garner - Concert by the Sea
10th Sep 2019
Erroll Garner's Concert by the Sea is a hardy perennial that became one of the best selling jazz albums of all time. An expanded edition was issued in 2015, finally allowing us to savour in full that magical September evening in 1955 at the Sunset School, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
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Jon Batiste - Anatomy of Angels
7th Aug 2019
Anyone who has seen 'The Late Show' will recognise Jon Batiste, but there is much more to him than being Stephen Colbert's musical side-kick, as he proves on the engrossing live set from New York's Village Vanguard.
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Ellington at Newport 1956
3rd Apr 2019
Let us journey back to the Newport Jazz Festival in 1956, to witness a demoralised Ellington Band find its mojo in realtime, thanks to a storming Paul Gonsalves solo that runs for 27 choruses, and caused a mini-riot.
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Desmond & Mulligan - Two of a Mind
28th Mar 2019
Matt winds down to urbane warriors Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan's Two of a Mind.
