Although all the records so far have been by American musicians, and mainly African American musicians, jazz was firmly established on the European side of the Atlantic by the early 1920s. European musicians initially based much of their jazz vocabulary on the USA, but after WW2 a new generation emerged with a unique and individual voice – nowhere more so than in Scandinavia. This band is the international quartet led by the exceptional US pianist Keith Jarrett with one of the most distinctive of all European soloists, the Norwegian tenor saxophonist Jan Garbarek, featured on its haunting melody. Jazz is a collaborative process, growing organically from diverse musical cultures. Fundamental to the process of becoming a jazz musician is the art of reacting to and supporting each other.
Upon joining Trinity Laban’s Jazz Department, you will enter a vibrant and dynamic community of improvisers. Though grounded in the jazz tradition, we are constantly looking forward and we invite you to draw on a wealth of diverse influences within these traditions, and reinterpret them in new ways as you find your individual voice. We will support you as you develop as a musician, an improviser and an innovative performing artist, enabling you to reach your full creative potential. South London-born Ashley Henry is one of a new generation of musicians who have been raised with a wide range of influences. His album debut Beautiful Vinyl Hunter saw him nominated by Cerys Matthews for BBC 6 Music’s Album of the Year, only the second jazz album to do so. The album won Jazz Japan’s Album of the Year and Henry is France’s Jazz Magazine New Jazz Artist of the Year.
In the 1940s, the swing era gave way to what was then known as “modern https://www.artmindfestival.com/” – the so-called bebop innovations of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Their faster, higher, more harmonically complex playing, with solos that rode roughshod over the eight or sixteen bar structures of the songs they played was dazzling and exciting, and ushered in the next generation of post-war players. The other great soloist in early jazz was soprano saxophonist and clarinettist Sidney Bechet. He was a different sort of virtuoso from Louis, and as well as spontaneous creation he composed setpiece solos that would dazzle his audiences with virtuosity. His remarkable playing on this chamber jazz record is a perfect example of his seamless integration of improvisation and forward planning.
By playing without a chord instrument – a guitar or piano – his band achieved a spare, pared-down feeling. His perfect front-line partner was trumpeter Chet Baker, whose economical, Spartan inventions contrasted perfectly with Mulligan’s more harmonically complex baritone sax. This song would later be a big hit for Chet as a vocalist, but the original version by the Mulligan Quartet is a benchmark in the development of cool https://www.wikipedia.org/. Multi award-winning singer, actor, broadcaster, comedian, Shaw (‘our finest’, The Times) celebrates his 60th at beautiful Hall One.
As well as leading his own quintet, Luft collaboratively runs several other projects, including a duo with the Albanian jazz singer and ECM recording artist Elina Duni, a mainstream jazz quartet with Dave O’Higgins and the tango quintet Deco Ensemble. He is also a regular member of some of London’s finest modern jazz groups, such as Byron Wallen’s Four Corners, Eddie Parker’s Airborn and the Chris Batchelor/Steve Buckley quintet. Rob Luft is an award-winning jazz guitarist from London whose virtuosity has been compared to that of six-string legends John McLaughlin, Al Di Meola and Paco De Lucia. For performances with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra in 2015, The Times said he was destined ‘to achieve great things in the future’.