London Jazz Festival

It’s an almost thankless task trying to top the 197 gigs and record attendances of over 60,000 people at 41 venues at last year’s ten-day event, but it seems like the organisers of this year’s London Jazz Festival have once again surpassed themselves.

Big namesThe sixteenth annual festival builds on the success of last year’s expansive program to include big-gun jazz legends like Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and John McLaughlin alongside a huge and diverse selection of the world’s most vibrant boundary crossing artists. In fact it’s fair to say almost every conceivable facet of what can be called ‘jazz’ today is here, all offering proof that the music continues to exert its revolutionary creative power whatever corner of the globe it hails from.

On the face of it all this diversity presents you the listener with that annual dilemma of finding an opening into this wonderfully rich world of music, yet discovering a niche and following the links is always sure to lead you in unexpected and exciting directions. Feature continues

SingersSo if it’s vocal jazz that gets your iPod swinging then this year’s opening night at the Barbican is a feast of epic proportions. Drawing on a century’s worth of songs, the likes of Carleen Anderson, Christine Tobin, Cleveland Watkiss, Liane Carroll, Madeleine Bell, Nate James and Melody Gardot will add a distinctly twenty-first-century twist to an imaginative program directed by trumpeter Guy Barker. Yet there’s an inventive thread running through the evening’s program based on numerical links to years ending in the number eight. This coincidentally joins together a mind-boggling array of some of the key figures in popular song over the last 100 years that includes Irving Berlin (born 1888), George Gershwin (1898) Lionel Hampton and the effervescent Louis Jordan (both born in 1908) as well as a celebration of the birthdays of Burt Bacharach and Quincy Jones. The Jazz Voice concert will take the audience on a fascinating, sometimes surprising journey through the timeless repertoire of the masters of song and swing.

Other vocalists worth catching include the witty Joe Stilgoe, bewitching Julia Biel, honey-voiced Juliet Kelly, sublime soul jazzer Jose James and the irrepressibly brilliant Ian Shaw all at various intimate venues across town. And if you’ve ever fallen for charms of louche French lounge-core maestro Serge Gainsbourg, superb UK saxophonist Andy Sheppard serves up a feast of mainly instrumental re-workings of this cult musician’s finest moments entitled Melody Gainsbourg. His superb international band features wonderful Vietnamese guitarist Nguyên Lê, Massive Attack guitarist Angelo Bruschini and our own Afro’d drum hero Seb Rochford.

Gigs in unusual venuesThis year jazz comes kicking and screaming out from those cosy clubs and into the streets with three bands taking part in the Festival On The Move series. These include Italian bass band Funk Off, amazing Japanese ten-baritone saxophone-toting group Tokyo-Chutei-Iki and our very own death-jazz piano group The Neil Cowley Trio. Each of these superb groups will be performing in a multitude of venues – Neil will be performing an unmissable set (the first of four gigs that day) at the Natural History Museum within touching distance of a T-Rex. A real first for jazz in London and the Natural History Museum. And dinosaurs.

Also look out for loads of great free gigs at the Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall and elsewhere as well as other family friendly events for all those junior jazz heads out there.

International artistsMatching London’s cultural diversity the festival features an embarrassment of globetrotting musical riches. So if you can’t afford a winter break this year let the music come to you instead. Akin to a Rough Guide To Global Jazz our tips for essential funky sounds from Africa are Femi Kuti, Richard Bona, and Gino Sitson, top genre-bending musicians from India appearing include Arun Ghosh, Vijay Iyer and Rudresh Mahanthappa. Japan’s amazing ten-baritone saxophone troupe Tokyo-Chutei-Iki will be out thrilling passers-by, while inspiring European sounds come from Nils Petter Molvaer, Jef Neve, Hadrien Feraud, Bugge Wesseltoft and many others show how strong the music is on our doorstep. Turkey’s folk-jazz supergroup Taksim Trio also appear, plus two of Cuba’s most gifted pianists Danilo Perez and Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and rising Israeli piano star Omer Klein are just some of the other highlights of this mind-blowing international cast.

The Norwegian’s are coming! But it’s not some invading Norse Viking horde but about twenty of their finest electro-jazz hipsters will be taking over the stunning newly opened Kings Place art/music complex. With everything from traditional Nordic dance demonstrations and music created from actual pieces of glacier ice to haunting jazz-folk songs and three nights of the PUNKT live music remix festival, this really is jazz at the cutting edge. And it sounds amazing too. Our tips that you simply cannot miss include Bugge’s Room, Susanna In The Country, Arve Henkirsen and Nils Petter Molvaer.

Experimental soundsIf you like your music with a hard edge and a snarling attitude then look no further than the new wave of post-jazz noise merchants who have been turning things up to eleven and adding heavy slabs of guitar and block-rocking beats to create a seriously excellent racket. You can hear members of this utterly irreverent jazz club all over the festival this year so make sure you catch The Final Terror, TrioVD, Led Bib, Get the Blessing, Outhouse, Neil Cowley Trio, Robert Glasper and the Godfather of Grunge Jazz himself, tenor sax terroriser Peter Brötzmann. Protective clothing and earplugs may be advisable.

Trad jazzHowever if swing is more your thing then there are plenty artists still playing jazz that’s steeped in the tradition but with a turbo-charged twentieth-century twist. Leading the pack is saxophonist extraordinaire Courtney Pine, who’s supported by young guns Empirical. There’s also warped sample-delic sounds from the Matthew Herbert Big Band, pulse-quickening bop from amazing US trumpeter Roy Hargrove (with the BBC Big Band), and booty-shaking Blue Note-style groves from the Five Corners Quintet.

In short it’s a big festival for a big city, the London Jazz Festival matches the capital’s diversity and excitement at every turn – so our advice is open your mind and let your ears follow.

London Jazz Festival, Nov 14-23, various venues.