Jane Cornwell
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Journalist, writer, compere. jazz/global music/arts stuff. Travel, sometimes. UK & Aus.
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Articles by Jane Cornwell
Introducing: Blue Note Essentials
Jazz can look like a daunting business from the outside. There are saxophonists who have made dozens of albums, trumpeters who appear on other people’s records, mysterious phrases like hard-bop, post-bop and in-the-pocket, and what are jazz musicians even doing in a woodshed, anyway? But you don’t need to know any of that to enjoy jazz. You just need somewhere to begin.
Artist, musician and poet Benjamin Clementine a lone ranger
“I’ve made a deal with loneliness,” says musician Benjamin Clementine. “It has always been with me and will never go away. Accepting that lets me figure out what I need to move forward. People with a lot of alone time have a gift from heaven.” He’s sitting in his recording studio in Florence, Italy, his dark hair teased into a cloud that rises towards the high, vaulted ceiling. “I don’t like going out, unless it is in nature,” he says.
‘Today's Brazilians have no idea what it feels like to lose democracy': Joyce Moreno on her battles to become a Latin musical great
Jane Cornwell At 78, Joyce Moreno is one of Brazil's musical icons, but for decades that status seemed far from assured: this headstrong singer, guitarist and composer was frequently viewed as a threat by her country's establishment. Aged 19, the reaction to her song Me Disseram – which began “I was told my man didn't love me” – almost torpedoed her career before it even started. “I'd often heard the expression ‘my man' sung by Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf, so for me it was normal,” she says.
‘Today’s Brazilians have no idea what it feels like to lose democracy’: Joyce Moreno on her battles to become a Latin musical great
At 78, Joyce Moreno is one of Brazil’s musical icons, but for decades that status seemed far from assured: this headstrong singer, guitarist and composer was frequently viewed as a threat by her country’s establishment. Aged 19, the reaction to her song Me Disseram – which began “I was told my man didn’t love me” – almost torpedoed her career before it even started. “I’d often heard the expression ‘my man’ sung by Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf, so for me it was normal,” she says.
DOMi & JD BECK: "WHO ASKED?"
There they were, this prodigious Gen Z fusion duo, gleefully vandalising jazz’s sacred cows – Coltrane, mainly, but also Madlib and MF DOOM – between jamming with Thundercat, collaborating with Herbie, co-writing with Silk Sonic, signing to Anderson .Paak’s Apeshit label and, along the way, releasing a Grammy-nominated 2022 debut album, “Not Tight”, so breathlessly good it blew your hair back. $25.99 Sale Sold Out Available to purchase from our US store.
‘I’m not a quitter!’ Rubén Blades, the salsa supremo who acted with Jack Nicholson, inspired Bad Bunny – and served as Panama’s tourism minister
“Well, I’ve been around,” says Rubén Blades, accurately. One of the most influential Latin musicians of the past half-century, the Panamanian singer-songwriter, 77, has been a defining force in salsa, collecting 25 Grammy awards – 13 Latin, 12 mainstream – and getting shout-outs from a new generation including Rosalía and Bad Bunny. Blades has moved between music, law, politics and film as if they were all part of the same conversation.
The Enduring Appeal of Norah Jones' - "Come Away With Me"
“Come away with me, in the night” crooned a 22-year-old singer-songwriter named Norah Jones, her voice warm and languorous, her fingers unhurriedly tracing the piano keys. Where did she come from, wondered the album’s discoverers, and – given that its 14 tracks drew from folk, country, blues, pop and jazz without exclusively belonging to any of them – why was she signed to a legendary jazz label? Available to purchase from our US store. Blue Note knew what they were doing.
Courtney Pine: Still Chasing The Urge Within - Jazzwise
As he prepares to headline the Love Supreme Jazz Festival this summer, saxophonist Courtney Pine reflects on four decades of reshaping British jazz. Jane Cornwell speaks to the multi-reed master When I speak to Courtney Pine – saxophonist, composer, bandleader, educator, national treasure – he has just completed two sold-out nights at Ronnie Scott’s, where his photo hangs on the wall alongside the great and good of international jazz. The irony isn’t lost on him.
Kamasi Washington at Harry Styles' Meltdown: A jazz colossus
There's a buzz that accompanies a Kamasi Washington show: a sense that something big is about to happen. Yesterday afternoon, as improvising London collective Steam Down tore it up on the outdoor stage - its edges swarming with tweens hoping for a sighting of Meltdown's guest programmer ("Is H anywhere?") - the Los Angeles saxophonist and bandleader turned the Festival Hall into an avant- jazz cathedral.
Nduduzo Makhathini - The Myth We Choose
Listen awhile to “The Myth We Choose”, the new recording from pianist and composer Nduduzo Makhathini, and there’s a sense that this is more than an album. It is a spiritual document in which ancestry, ritual and cosmology blend and spark; where memory is invoked through voices that radiate via handclaps, prayerful piano figures and rhythms that feel dug from the earth. Available to purchase from our US store.
Hip-hop forefather Brian Jackson on playing for the revolution
“We were messengers, keepers of tradition, harbingers of things to come.” Brian Jackson is reflecting on his partnership with the late musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron, often called the Godfather of Rap, and on the America of the 1970s and 1980s that fed their work. It is an America more enduring than they might have hoped. They saw themselves, he says, as part of a much older tradition.
Marco Mezquida Trio: Táctil
A decade’s worth of collaboration, and Barcelona-based Marco Mezquida and his trio with Martín Meléndez and Aleix Tobías continue to refine and reimagine their shared language. Táctil is a quietly beautiful addition to Mezquida’s 40-strong catalogue that takes touch as its theme (“I feel this music in a tactile way – physical, three-dimensional, tangible,” he writes in the sleeve notes). Mezquida’s piano work remains central, balancing clean, lyrical lines with occasional percussive accents.
Tina Carr: Moon Over Mildmay
Tina Carr's debut album, Songs for Curly, came out of leftfield in 2023, a low-key collection of covers that wooed you gently, introducing the sort of voice suited to dive bars film noirs and late night rendezvous. Recorded by way of tribute to Carr's Eastern European grandfather, an immigrant with a storied life and a cafe in Whitechapel, it was raw and real.
Theo Croker and Sullivan Fortner: Play
There's a baseline, a benchmark, that all improvisers leap from. In the case of trumpeter Theo Croker and pianist Sullivan Fortner, chops-laden visionaries both, it's a bar so vertiginous that free jazz excellence is almost a given. There was no guarantee, of course, that these two stylistically very different players would magic brilliance from the ether.
Jazzwise - Album Reviews
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Gabrielle Cavassa - Diavola - Everything Jazz
Sit still – you’ll want to – and listen. Open your ears to a voice so intimate and authentic, so rich and clear, that the stories it tells might be told just for you. Stories of love, heaven and raindrops; of night, magic and devilish doings. Like the great divas of yore, Gabrielle Cavassa sings up worlds that draw you in. Now, with her Blue Note label debut “Diavola”, a collection of inspired interpretations and classic-sounding originals, she stakes her claim in the jazz pantheon.
Lee Morgan - City Lights - Everything Jazz
“It’s all music. It’s either hip or it ain’t,” said Lee Morgan, whose music was the hippest. You felt that when, as a 19-year-old trumpet hotshot in 1957, he recorded “City Lights” with a sextet of happening young gunslingers, covering tunes including Heyman-Green’s edgy-smooth standard ‘You’re Mine, You’ and Benny Golson’s ‘City Lights’, with its vibrant bass-and-horn intro and night-time Broadway zing. Philadelphia-born, church-raised, Morgan was a rising star, a technically gifted wünderkind.
Let Us Clap - Real World Records
Lamisi Released 20 February 2026 Agol Zane Ya Kinkin No Orgasm in Heaven Tumsum Come Salma Daka Nisaal Unity Painkiller Liner notes You’ll hear it as you bump along the road into Zebilla, a vibrant town in the remote Upper East Region of northern Ghana. The sound of palms striking palms: rhythmic. Complex. Communal. You might hear laughter, and harmonised chanting. On arrival, you may even spot Ghanaian star Lamisi, singing and dancing in a circle of women, all of them clapping. And clapping.
EFG London Jazz Festival 2025 opening gala at Royal Festival Hall: 'off to a sumptuous start'
An angled elbow, a raised baton, and the 44-piece EFG London Jazz Festival Orchestra was off, gliding into Open Up Your Senses, a dreamy tune written and sung by rising US star Tyreek McDole. “Won't you open up your senses, eliminate pretenses,” crooned the Haitian American, 25, in a baritone so warm it seemed to ruffle your hair.
'Afrofuturistic cosmic wisdom'
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Erykah Badu at Royal Albert Hall: 'An Afrofuturistic universe of cosmic wisdom'
A darkened stage, a cacophony of recorded whispers, and there, on an elevated platform, was Erykah Badu. Statuesque in a tall peaked black hat, her gold grillz glinting in the red then blue haze, a drum-pad to her left, her crack-team of six musicians and two backing vocalists positioned around her. "I am a warrior princess," sang the Dallas native, 54. "I have come from the other sun.
EFG London Jazz Festival 2025: an insider's guide to all the hottest shows
Jazz is attracting a new generation of fans and the EFG London Jazz Festival is here to cater to them with global superstars flying in from all corners. Tomoki Sanders is jetting in from New York with their sax, Cuban-born Ana Carla Maza is bringing her cello, and Adrian Younge is making it the final stop of his European tour.
Ganavya: Daughter of a Temple at the Barbican review - moved people to tears
For most of her set, we lost ourselves. Sure, we were at the Barbican, and this was Ganavya's biggest headline show to date. But as she set about showcasing her blend of spiritual jazz, Indian traditions and devotional music, mainly with songs from her free-flowing album Daughter of a Temple, the California-based singer and multi-instrumentalist — whose name means 'one who was born to spread music' — took us somewhere else.
Herbie Hancock at the Barbican review: unpredictable, entertaining and ageless
Herbie Hancock turned 85 last April and here he was, celebrating with his crack quintet, white keytar and pioneering catalogue, with the first in a three-night-residency at the Barbican. "Coming to London feels like coming home," he says, seated between a grand piano and a set of Korg Kronos keyboards and smiling from behind his black-rimmed specs.
Paul Cornish: Truth is Everything - Everything Jazz
Paul Cornish remembers being twelve years old, up the back of the bus after a summer jazz workshop at middle school in southwest Houston, jostling with his mates for a turn of the headphones connected to someone’s single black iPod. None of them could believe what they were hearing. “I was just blown away,” says the rising star pianist, composer and bandleader, 28. “I felt completely liberated, and I wanted to recapture that feeling. I wanted people to feel the same way when I played music for them.
Gill Hicks: Still Alive and Kicking — a poignant jazz performance from a 7/7 survivor
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Gill Hicks: Still Alive and Kicking — a poignant jazz performance from a 7/7 survivor
Flanked by Dylan Paul on upright bass and Julian Ferraretto on keening violin and ethereal musical saw, and with huge images of her colourful artwork projected onto the wall behind her, the South Australian-born Hicks delivers her songs seated, an elegant hand on her transparent cane, her black tulle skirt flowing down over no-nonsense black bovver boots. A pair of prosthetic feet sit at the front of the stage, toenails painted, skin henna-ed, their very separateness carrying symbolic weight.
Joshua Redman: Words Fall Short - Everything Jazz
There are musicians who allocate time – say, six months or a year – to write an album. Then there are artists so prolific, so filled with music and ideas, that new compositions flow freely, surfacing to find their identity, but not always their home. So, when “something flipped along the way” and it occurred to Joshua Redman that the young working quartet he’d assembled for the world tour behind “where are we”, his 2023 Blue Note debut, was of a calibre beyond his expectations, he knew that A.
WOMADelaide, Australia, March 7–10 2025 | Songlines
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 By Jane Cornwell Jane Cornwell picks out six sweet sets from WOMADelaide in Australia, featuring Trio da Kali, Duo Ruut, Yemi Alade and more Yemi Alade (photo by Dianne Brooks) Thanks for visiting the Songlines website, your guide to an extraordinary world of music and culture.
Maya Delilah: The Long Way Round - Everything Jazz
Maya Delilah is sitting cross-legged on the floor, her back against a couch, her Maton electric guitar across her lap. Flames from a dozen white candles flicker as her fingers dance along the fretboard, her technical dexterity and easy versatility impressive, even on this time-snatched Instagram post.
Gerald Clayton: Ones and Twos - Everything Jazz
“When I set out to play, I want to make sure that I’m serving the music,” says six-times Grammy-nominated pianist, composer and educator Gerald Clayton, sitting before a wall colonised by artwork at his home in Los Angeles. “That involves playing with truth and honesty, not letting any theory or premeditated thing lead the way. I enjoy the uncertainty of composing, the looking for something new and unprecedented.” “Has this been done before? Maybe not literally,” he muses.
Interview with Sasha Berliner: "Many of us are involved in modern jazz that avoids categorisation, that maybe isn’t even jazz"
The vibraphonist and composer Sasha Berliner is Zooming me from onboard a ship in a port in Mexico. There’s an abstract painting on the wall behind her, and sunlight dancing along her arms, which are tattooed with filigree leaves and flowers. “I’ve never done one of these before,” says the LA-based artist, 26, of her locale, a Jazz Cruise hosted by trumpeter Chris Botti.
Theo Croker's Dream Manifest at the Barbican review: jazz, just not as we know it
Theo Croker's Dream Manifest at the Barbican review: jazz, just not as we know it "If they have to rename the Gulf of Mexico then they better call it the Gulf of Miles Davis!" Grammy-nominated composer, producer and trumpet ace Theo Croker always been an ideas man. Blk2Life, his sixth album, aimed to send “coded frequencies to activate sleeping ancestral DNA”.
Theo Croker's Dream Manifest at the Barbican review: jazz, just not as we know it
"If they have to rename the Gulf of Mexico then they better call it the Gulf of Miles Davis!" Grammy-nominated composer, producer and trumpet ace Theo Croker always been an ideas man. Blk2Life, his sixth album, aimed to send “coded frequencies to activate sleeping ancestral DNA”. Love Quantum, its 2022 follow-up, reframed modern African American music with a futuristic aesthetic, soaring from neo-soul, hip-hop, R&B and electro-grooves into its own space jazz atmosphere.
NYJO: The Fire Next Time - A Tribute To James Baldwin
Review NYJO: The Fire Next Time - A Tribute To James Baldwin Jane Cornwell "You have to go the way your blood beats," said James Baldwin, the American novelist, playwright, poet and activist who did exactly that. No matter how he lived his life - in Harlem, Paris, in the church, in defiance - he remained authentic, eschewing labels, exploring meaning, speaking truth to power. Baldwin's words had rhythm, offered freedom. That he loved jazz, and jazz loved him, made sense.
Arboresque – Renee Rosnes of ARTEMIS on Jazz Steeped in Nature - Everything Jazz
Olive branches. Rays of light in woodlands. The smell of rained-on earth after a summer downpour. Each of the five virtuosos that make up ARTEMIS – an outfit so brilliant they’ve just topped ‘Jazz Group of the Year’ in the DownBeat Readers Poll for the second year running – had gone off, alone, to write new material. The compositions they then brought back for workshopping were thoughtful, compelling and utterly unique. But most of their titles, and all their sentiments, were rooted in nature.
A Dance More Sweetly Played
Rating: ★★★★ View album and artist details Artist/band: Kyle Shepherd Trio Label: Matsuli Music February/March/2025 It’s rare, as a reviewer, to be sent an album you’ll have on repeat. A Dance Sweetly Played is such a recording.
¡Viva Los Domingos!
Wednesday, December 4, 2024 By Jane Cornwell Sundays in London are about to get a lot more Cuban as a new monthly residency fires up a crack team of timba musicians for its inaugural event “Ahí na’ ma’!” (Let’s go!), yells Mixael Cabrera, sweating through his tight fawn jumper as he side-steps and swivels his hips, his ponytail extensions a monochromatic blur.
Taking Off: Jahari Stampley
Jahari Stampley’s career is the stuff of jazz dreams, and he’s only edging into his mid-twenties. Last year the Chicago-based pianist, composer and producer independently released a debut album, Still Listening, a project whose wildly original mix of electronica, church music and avant-garde stylings had the likes of Robert Glasper, Derrick Hodge and Jill Scott double taking.
esperanza spalding and Milton Nascimento interview: “The music for me is basically friendship, love, children, ocean, the life”
Features esperanza spalding and Milton Nascimento interview: “The music for me is basically friendship, love, children, ocean, the life” Jane Cornwell “Being around Milton is like being around a magical presence,” says bassist and singer esperanza spalding [sic] of the iconic Brazilian singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento, 82, with whom she has released a new cross-generational studio album, Milton + esperanza on Concord Jazz.
EFG London Jazz Festival: our pick of the shows to see from Jamie Cullum to Marisa Monte
Jane Cornwell 12 November 2024 at 9:31 am·4-min read Jazz hands at the ready: the annual EFG London Jazz Festival this week with a host of world-renowned artists and emerging stars coming to the capital. There are all sorts of styles to be found in the 300-plus shows in over 60 venues: be-bop, swing, hip hop, spiritual jazz, experimental stylings and much, much more.
EFG London Jazz Festival: our pick of the shows to see from Jamie Cullum to Marisa Monte
EFG London Jazz Festival: our pick of the shows to see from Jamie Cullum to Marisa Monte Jazz hands at the ready: the annual EFG London Jazz Festival this week with a host of world-renowned artists and emerging stars coming to the capital. There are all sorts of styles to be found in the 300-plus shows in over 60 venues: be-bop, swing, hip hop, spiritual jazz, experimental stylings and much much.
Tomorrow’s Warriors’ Female Frontline, Cherise, Eska and Marta Lopez Baxe fire-up Jazz Cafe
Review Tomorrow’s Warriors’ Female Frontline, Cherise, Eska and Marta Lopez Baxe fire-up Jazz Cafe Jane Cornwell "I'm used to being a young person in this line-up," said award-winning singer Cherise, 26, standing centre stage and addressing her fellow songbirds, Keira Chakraborty and Marta Lopez Baxe, who were positioned next to her.
Immanuel Wilkins Finds Healing In The Blues - Everything Jazz
Ideally, when listening to “Blues Blood”, the new third album by alto-saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, you’ll be cooking. Chopping, stirring and seasoning; slowly turning up the heat. Back in 2021, at the live premiere – online, from a pandemic-struck New York – of this astounding long-form jazz suite, Wilkins and his quartet and a clutch of guest vocalists had a chef working onstage with them. As the music’s meditational tonalities unfurled, the smell of food began to fill the performance space.
Women in jazz today: how much has the position of women in jazz improved, when compared to our first edition back in 1997?
There are more of us. More singers, instrumentalists, composers and arrangers. More audience members. More promoters, agents, photographers and – maybe not quite enough (yet) on this publication and others like it – writers/journalists. Women, that is. Women in jazz.
Folk singer Grace Petrie on turning desperation into defiance
“And you never will surrender / To a narrow view of gender,” sings British singer-songwriter Grace Petrie on her best-known song, 2018’s anti-conformity anthem “Black Tie”.
A Dream in Essaouira
Rating: ★★★★ View album and artist details Artist/band: Abdel Benaddi Label: Worlds Within Worlds September/2024 Gnawa music is booming in popularity, and not before time. Created by sub-Saharan musicians living in the Maghreb, many of which are the descendants of slaves, its trancey pentatonic rhythms underpin the all-night healing rituals called lilas, and have fed collaborations from Randy Weston and Santana to London crossovers and Ibiza club mixes.
Walter Smith III Keeps It Real - Everything Jazz
Is there such a thing as a Houston sound? Saxophonist and bandleader Walter Smith III, who is from there, thinks so. “You’ll hear a lot of style attached in terms of the harmony and the building of melodies, in the elements that are groove-oriented, even in the approach to playing,” says Smith, 43, a post-bopping saxophonist and bandleader acclaimed as one of the most compelling, forward-thinking talents of his generation. “And everybody has a great sense of humour,” he continues with a smile.
Daniel Casimir: the big band in balance
Big band energy with bespoke London edge. Orchestral string arrangements vying and blending with bebop, soul, grime and R&B. The upright bass, this composer’s instrument of choice, addressing both harmony and rhythm, supporting and interacting while determining direction, grounding then elevating the music. A cinematic soundscape that celebrates the diversity of the UK jazz scene while taking it to exciting new places, this is Balance - the second album by the award-winning Daniel Casimir.
Joel Ross interview: “I love the opportunity to play with other people and learn their perspectives of music and the world”
Joel Ross was 18, a student at Brubeck music college in California, when a favourite teacher took him to meet Bobby Hutcherson, then 72 and living by the coast. The iconic jazz vibraphone and marimba player welcomed the younger man – together with his reputation as a vibes player of precocious creativity – with characteristic grace. Several years on, the advice Hutcherson gave remains vivid.
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