SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
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An error occurred while searching, try again later.Jazz album reviews with Chris Searle: February 17, 2025
New releases from The Jim Mullen Quartet, Caroline Kraabel/John Edwards, and Matthew Muneses/Riza Printup
PAUL FOLEY recommends an extraordinary double bill that packs a punch and leaves you reeling
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a play about AI that results in a deadening disconnect for its audience
SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
MATTHEW HAWKINS pays tribute to the performance artist and costumier, Leigh Bowery
SIMON DUFF reviews a new composition by German composer and pianist Florian Weber that blurs the line between where improvisation ends and composition begins
JAN WOOLF wallows in the historical mulch of post WW2 West Germany, and the resistant, challenging sense made of it by Anselm Kiefer
Jim Mullen Quartet
For Heaven’s Sake
(Stunt Records)
★★★★
THE veteran Glaswegian guitarist Jim Mullen is on swinging form here. Recorded in Copenhagen with an organ trio, he plays an eclectic range of tunes from The Touch of Your Lips, Ellington’s Caravan and Bobby Timmons’ This Here, to unlikely versions of Swanee River and When in Rome.
Accompanied by Ben Paterson’s organ, Kristian Leth’s drums and the Paul Gonsalves-inspired tenor saxophone of Jan Harbeck, Mullen’s appetite for melody and lyricism is in full fettle.
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