Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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‘We know how to make each other shine’
Chris Searle on Jazz
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
Hiromi and the Trio Project
Move and Alive (Telarc)
WHEN I first heard the Japanese pianist Hiromi live, in the Royal Festival Hall at the London Jazz Festival in November, it was as if a hurricane had hit the keys, with her hands traversing them with so much speed that her arms were a blur like some dazzling impressionist image.
And out of this came so much sound, with her contrabass guitarist, the New Yorker Anthony Jackson, laying down such a pulsating, succulent beat and her London drummer Simon Phillips within the mental compound of his steelworks of cymbals crashing and booming his message through the air of that most formal of venues.
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