MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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‘It’s about finding something we didn’t know existed before’
Saxophonist ALAN WILKINSON talks to Chris Searle about the liberating power of jazz improvisation
Free spirit: Alan Wilkinson
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
“AT THE age of 14 I saw Jimi Hendrix and it changed my life.” Surprising words, perhaps, from a baritone saxophonist steeped in free jazz improvisation.
Not so. He recalls his sailor eldest brother who used to bring home instruments from his travels and that’s when Alan Wilkinson first picked up a guitar.
At Leeds College of Art he “pursued painting with a passion” until he became disillusioned with the idea of producing “objects for the bourgeois market.” Gradually, music took over and he began listening to US jazzmen like Coltrane, Shepp and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. But it was hearing Peter Brotzmann with the Globe Unity Orchestra that had a huge effect.
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