MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
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A celebration of the steel pan
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production that panders – if inadvertently – to Western prejudice against China
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
ALEX HALL recommends a book that places empirical evidence at the heart of understanding racism
Vortex
Leon Foster-Thomas Quartet
THE London Jazz Festival has at last recognised that by offering Leon Foster-Thomas, virtuoso and pan man extraordinaire from San Fernando, Trinidad – the home of the Oil Workers Trade Union – an inaugural concert at Dalston’s Vortex. Home from home it was.
In a London quartet with pianist Sam Leak, drummer Ebow Mensah and Mirko Scarcia on bass, this Caribbean pan sunrise was full of serene, lucid melody and innovative, rampant improvisation.
Mensah’s thumping percussion, Leak’s chirping, swinging keys and Scarcia’s plunking, dancing strings jelled beautifully with the grace and power of Leon’s pan, shining like silver. The packed house, full of Caribbean souls, loved his rhapsodic, solo bursts as if they were straight from the human interaction of Gillett Square and Ridley Road Market close by.
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