Day two of Love Supreme 2025
- Hilary Seabrook
- Jul 5
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 8
Saturday was grey, with rain on and off, but the music was absolutely on fire.
My day began in fine style with Ferg’s Imaginary Big Band on the Supreme Standards stage. I reviewed their gig at Ronnie Scott’s a couple of weeks ago and the second hearing didn’t disappoint. Such life and invention that’s not easy to achieve in such a large ensemble, but Fergus Quill manages it brilliantly. It was good to chat with him after the performance and that forms part of my Love Supreme special episode of Harmonious World.
A brief experience of Another Taste on the North Downs stage, before the fabulous bilingual singer songwriter Gaby Moreno was introduced to the South Downs stage by Nigel Williams from Jazz FM.
The trouble with Love Supreme is that it’s just impossible to see everyone and I missed Poppy Daniels but caught an excellent recording of Jazz Shapers on Jazz FM with Elliot Moss, chatting with Gary Crosby and Janine Irons. Together, they founded the powerful and effective Tomorrow’s Warriors and have such a fascinating perspective on music education, which is truly inspirational.
The main stage was dominated in the early afternoon by WAR, which I caught briefly before heading back to the South (slightly smaller and indoor) stage to hear Chucho Valdes. His set was (so far) my highlight of 2025: the drum/percussion battles were extraordinary alongside bass and, of course, Valdes’s piano. If you want to hear latin jazz done best, you wouldn’t go far wrong with checking out his catalogue.
Because Valdes was so captivating, I missed Brian Jackson (erstwhile collaborator with the late, great Gil Scott-Heron), but was then able to watch an entire set by Stanley Clarke. Another jazz giant who, much like Valdez, has a young band who are continuing to carry his musical flame: his slap double bass has to be heard to be believed. Clarke was one of the founders of the jazz fusion movement and he's definitely still got those chops.
Clarke’s sax player (Emilio Modeste) was another stand-out musician and that led me nicely across to the Supreme Standards stage to catch Lakecia Benjamin. What a player! Her alto sax playing is off the scale and she totally owned the stage.
It was a delight then to choose to see Kassa Overall who followed her onto the Supreme Standards stage and there, once more, was Emilio Modeste. Overall brought another impressive set to Love Supreme and it’s hard to choose which of these performances will be my highlight of today. The band he had with him are releasing an album soon, and I’ll definitely be reviewing it.
Starting with Fergus Quinn and ending with Kassa Overall proved just how inventive the jazz world is right now. It’s an exciting place to be observing and reviewing.
You can hear more about the weekend with some interviews on the latest episode of Harmonious World
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