Album reviews

Expected - and delightful

It’s electric! Jazz harp and innovation

Piano trio jazz, done beautifully

Taking a sensational big band (the WDR Big Band ) and adding some extraordinary bass in the hands of John Goldsby  makes for a compelling album with ‘Big Band Bass’. Released on 7 November 2025, Big Band Bass combines all that is expected and brilliant from the big band that is part of German public broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne with American bassist John Goldsby. This really is some of the finest big band players around today, adding in the phenomenal b

Reinventing a classic 1980s sound with latin jazz

Punchy horns and vocal lines

I first saw drummer Kassa Overall a decade ago when he appeared in London with trumpeter Theo Croker. He was impressive then, but even more so when he brought his own band to the Love Supreme Festival in July 2025. Now he brings us CREAM , his fourth solo studio album and it’s a brilliant piece of modern jazz that fuses hip-hop and ‘proper’ jazz drums in arrangements of tunes that really shouldn’t work in a jazz setting. But they do. There’s nothing new in jazz musicians arr

Jazz that’s a soundtrack for today

“A generous musical powerhouse”

Tenor sax player Mark Turner has released Reflections on: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man - a powerful commentary on important social issues for our time. Inspired by the James Weldon Johnson book The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man , Turner has composed a suite that juxtaposes spoken extracts from the book alongside fine, complex and intricate modern jazz. The book is a semi-fictional account, set in post-Reconstruction America, of a biracial man able to ‘pass’ as

Just when you think you’ve heard all an artist has to offer, they produce something as entrancing as Jacob Collier ’s ‘The Light for Days’. With seven GRAMMY® wins and performances to crowds around the world, Collier was on top form at this summer’s Love Supreme Festival, but this new collection of originals and covers seems to herald a new direction after the intense productions of the Djesse project. With just a couple of guitars over four days, The Light for Days  comprise

Brazilian soul pioneer Carlos Dafé and Adrian Younge collaborate on ‘JID 025’

Big thanks for Federation of the Disco Pimp for bringing funky sounds

Einaudi reworked by Einaudi

Music that flows between classical and jazz

New album from legendary jazz sax player Charles Lloyd

Australian jazz is really finding its feet

Jazz quintet Hand to Earth brings diversity to life

The unstoppable Mr Laurance

An international celebration of the music of Egberto Gismonti