‘*****’, The Times, Independent On Sunday, Daily Telegraph, What’s On, Evening Standard, The Independent. ‘Marvellous pop — catchy, fun, young, effortless’, The Times; ‘one of the delights of the age’, Songlines.

‘an exquisitely poignant, evocative record’, Daily Telegraph; ‘wonderful… album of the year’, Sunday Times; ‘simply a classic album. Music by the people, for the people,’ The Voice.

‘superlative’, Mojo; ‘sensational’, The Observer; ‘hugely evocative and poignant’, Daily Telegraph; ‘*****’ The Times, Metro; ‘sheer joy from start to finish’, Sunday Telegraph.

Wonderful. ‘One of the greatest recordings of jazz history,’ Nat Hentoff wrote in Down Beat.
Try Louis’ opening duet with Velma Middleton, an extravagantly affirmative New Orleans blues about sex, sexual attraction, sexual exploitation, sexual violence and death. A massive, rumbling groove, with choice male-female banter, and extended soloing, sent from heaven.
‘He always had a sense of humour so lacking in musicians of today,’ said Sun Ra. ‘He is part of my destiny.’

Zingers from five different nightclub engagements, mostly drawn from Pops’ personal reel-to-reel collection — at Bop City in New York in 1950, Club Hangover in San Francisco in 1952, Storyville in Boston in 1953, Basin Street in New York in 1955 and the Brant Inn in Ontario in 1958 — featuring five different iterations of Armstrong’s All Stars, including such luminaries as Jack Teagarden, Barney Bigard, Earl Hines, Arvell Shaw, Cozy Cole, Marty Napoleon, Milt Hinton, Barrett Deems, Edmond Hall…

The clarinettist with keys and electric guitar: chamber-improv, polyrhythms and ambience, rhapsodic piano and funky Fender, clarinet soliloquies, counterpoint, a little Bitches Brew, some North African…

With the violinist Dominique Pifarély and cellist Vincent Courtois.

For the first time on an ECM disc, the French clarinettist explores — in characteristically individual fashion — the classic jazz format of reeds, piano, bass and drums.
Sinewy, expressive engagements with the street art of Ernest Pignon-Ernest, from Ramallah to Rome, in search of ‘a dynamic, a movement that will give birth to a rhythm, an emotion, a song.’

Trio Tapestry — with Marilyn Crispell and Carmen Castaldi.

The post bop masters with pianist Lawrence Fields, bassist Linda May Han Oh, and drummer Joey Baron. Two Shorter classics — Fee Fi Fo Fum and Juju — in amongst their originals.

The five-part suite which kicked off the 1973 concert released as Black Beings (but which was omitted from that LP). Frank Lowe on fire, with Joseph Jarman, Raymond Lee Cheng, William Parker and Rashid Sinan all getting a word in, over the forty minutes.

Killer, jostling lineup: Don Cherry, Grachan Moncur, Geri Allen, Charnett and Charles Mofffett.
‘Don has one of his best outings for years, bright, warmly antagonistic and full of melody. Moncur plays as well as ever, varying his slide positions and embouchure to just this side of multiphonics’ (Penguin Guide).
Warmly recommended.

‘An affectionate update on the sort of tightly arranged hard-bop album that was a specialty of the Blue Note label from the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s. Frank Lowe has developed a thoughtfully muscular approach to the tenor saxophone that’s exceptionally resourceful and personal, and his bandmates… are similarly animated by both an exploratory bent and a love for the hard-bop tradition. This is Mr. Lowe’s finest album to date’ (New York Times).

With guests Kit Downes on hammond organ, and cellist Lucy Railton.
Jazz album of the month, in The Guardian: ‘an unusual path, combining spellbinding singing with wayward improv… Speak Low II foregrounds Cadotsch’s crystal-clear lyricism more than its predecessor without ever cramping the freedoms of her classy improvising partners. She brings a graceful accessibility to a personal and ingeniously offbeat setup.’

‘With just four long, leisurely, percussion-drenched tracks, it’s a latin-jazz jam-band dream, with none other than Joe Henderson adding smoky tenor that ratchets up the intensity and mystery, and fusion avatars Stanley Clark and Lenny White super-charging the grooves. Think of it as a direct descendant of In A Silent Way, but with a lysergic twist and Miles’s tentative phrases replaced by Gasca’s brash, sassy blasts.’ (Jazzwise)