STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
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Album reviews with Ian Sinclair
Latest releases from Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn, Jeremy Dutcher and Aldous Harding
CAILEAN MCBRIDE welcomes a refreshing and timely study of the way officialdom creates structures that exclude LGBT+ rights and humanity
The bard mourns the loss of comrades and troubadours, and looks for consolation with Black Country Jess
CHRIS MOSS relishes the painting and the life story of a self-taught working-class artist from Warrington
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a star-studded adaptation of Ibsen’s play that is devoid of believable humanity
GORDON PARSONS is fascinated by a unique dream journal collected by a Jewish journalist in Nazi Berlin
Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade, Parthenope, Where Dragons Live and Thunderbolts* reviewed by MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE
Vijay Iyer/Craig Taborn
Transitory Poems
(ECM Records)
★★★
BIG names in the world of contemporary jazz in their own right, US composers Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn have come to together for this unusual album, an instrumental live concert at the Liszt Academy in Budapest where they duet on two pianos.
Described as “a series of homages” in the inlay notes, several songs are dedicated to recently deceased artists including pianists Cecil Taylor and Muhal Richard Abrams and painter and sculptor Jack Whitten.
While some jazz music is often dismissed as “easy listening,” Transitory Poems is very far from this, with opening track Life Line (Seven Tensions) a challenging and dissonant aural assault.
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