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London Jazz Festival 2011 highlights

Our critics' pick of the very best from the capital's annual jazz extravaganza

Most viewed jazz and improv gigs

  1. Gregory Porter
  2. Morricone In Love feat Fiona Staniland/Nick Ramm
  3. Matthew Bourne
  4. Billy Cobham Band + Leonid Shinkarenko Jazz Five
  5. Portico Quartet
  6. Randolph Matthews/Byron Johnston
  7. Gilad Atzmon with Strings
  8. Omar
  9. Hugh Masekela
  10. Zoe Rahman Quartet
More jazz and improv gigs in London

The best venues for jazz music

  • Discover the best places to hear improv music in London with Time Out recommendastions.

Discover London's best venues for jazz and improv music

The London Jazz Festival, taking place between November 11-20 , is now in its nineteenth year and continues its mission to bring the very best of the global jazz scene to your doorstep as it takes over every imaginable performance space – from busy streets to the grandest of concert halls – across the capital.

Yet deciding what to see and hear from the 280 gigs in more than 50 venues, is an almost overwhelming task. Time Out is here to get you started and tip you off to some of the festival's highlights, so here are our top ten recommendations to get you started...

What to see at the London Jazz Festival

  • Kairos 4tet

    Fri Nov 11, Vortex Dalston

    Talent-heavy sax-led group featuring emerging alto/tenor sax star Adam Waldmann whose warm yet biting tone, attractive rock-edged (but acoustic) melodies and dazzling polyrhythmic grooves ... Read more

  • Wes Anderson/Cyrus Chestnut/Herlin Riley/Nicholas Payton/Wycliffe Gordon perform 'Louis' (live soundtrack)

    Sun Nov 13, Barbican Centre

    Wynton Marsalis has written an accompanying score for a brand-new silent film about the life of Louis Armstrong and picked a crack squad of players to render it live at its European premiere. Read more

  • Steve Swallow

    Steve Swallow Quintet + The Impossible Gentlemen

    Sun Nov 13, Queen Elizabeth Hall

    Double bass-toting jazz maestro Swallow performs both with his solo band and his other troupe, TIG. Read more

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    trioVD + Guillaume Perret And The Electric Epic

    Wed Nov 16, The Camp Basement

    Incendiary Leeds-based trio of uber-skilled guitarist Chris Sharkey, whirling drum monster Chris Bussey and wild sax/vocalist Chris de Bezenac. Mixing up mad metronomic grooves, warped riffs and white-hot energy... Read more

  • Jerry Dammers Spatial AKA Orchestra

    Fri Nov 18, Barbican Centre

    Former Specials man and 2 Tone label founder Dammers leads this emphatically outlandish jazz supergroup, originally convened to pay affectionate homage to maverick surrealist jazz spaceman Sun Ra, but now boldly heading... Read more

  • Roy Haynes

    Roy Haynes: Fountain Of Youth Band + Peter King

    Fri Nov 18, Queen Elizabeth Hall

    Drummer Haynes has a CV that makes most of his contemporaries' look like sick notes - lengthy stints with Lester Young, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Monk, Getz, Coltrane and right the way up to extensive work... Read more

  • Beats and Pieces

    Beats And Pieces

    Sat Nov 19, Kings Place

    Artfully bombastic Manchester-based 14-piece big band band debunk any stuffy notions that such brass-heavy units can be anything but cool. Conductor/composer Ben Cottrell brilliantly combines... Read more

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    Ornette Coleman

    Sun Nov 20, Royal Festival Hall

    Widely recognised as the missing link between bebop and the free jazz scene, saxophonist Coleman pioneered the idea of improvising without chord changes... Read more

  • Bill Frisell

    Bill Frisell: 858 Quartet

    Sun Nov 20, Queen Elizabeth Hall

    One of the most distinctive and instantly recognisable members of the jazz guitar aristocracy, Frisell has long since side-stepped his jazz credentials to create his own... Read more

  • Tia Fuller

    Tia Fuller

    Sun Nov 20, Pizza Express Jazz Club

    Sparkling melody-driven modern jazz-meets-fusion from this exciting emerging US sax player. Fuller has already worked with Beyonce and bassist Christian McBride - yet has plenty of her own ideas as heard on her... Read more

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By WORD LOVE WITHIN ONE WORLD... - Nov 24 2011

www.reverbnation.com/johnnybonkers

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By Peter - Oct 29 2011

Sunday 20th in the Clore Ballroom sees four hours of FREE music from London's F-IRE Collective - home of some of the most exciting and innovative music in town. Including a fascinating combination of 5 different keyboards, and a Large Ensemble playing the music of Richard Turner (the young trumpeter who sadly died earlier this year)

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