MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
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Best of 2108: Jazz Albums
by CHRIS SEARLE
Percussive pioneer: Lorraine Baker
[Simon Murrell]
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
This year was definitely a year of the jazz woman, with some fine albums telling a story of a profound and innovative direction in British jazz.
Young Kentish drummer Lorraine Baker, whose first album Spark! is a tribute to her musical hero, the New Orleans-born drummer Ed Blackwell, joined forces with her band on the album Eden to play tunes associated with Blackwell, with tenor saxophonist Binker Golding, bassist Paul Michael and protean pianist Liam Noble all in powerful fettle.
Her childhood love of tap-dancing inspired Baker's drumming and of Blackwell she says: “He sounds like he's dancing when he's playing.”
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