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Globally great
CHRIS SEARLE enjoys this year’s London Jazz Festival, a brilliant amalgam of youth and experience from Britain and all over the world

SOUTH AFRICA’S skies hover over the South Bank of the Thames as septuagenarian Louis Moholo-Moholo’s Cape drums fire the 23-piece Dedication Orchestra.

Their heartfelt set is a blessing for the great South African jazz exiles the Blue Notes who arrived in London from apartheid in 1964. 

Some of their original and revered contemporaries, from pianist Keith Tippett, tenorist Evan Parker, altoist Ray Warleigh and trumpeter Henry Lowther, are still here with other younger virtuosi like saxophonists Jason Yarde and Julian Arguelles and bassist John Edwards from later generations adding their own committed brilliance.

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