JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
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Salute to Duke Ellington, Cafe Oto London
Pat Thomas pays memorable tribute to the ‘Duke’
True genius: Duke Ellington in 1971
[Louis Panassie/Creative Commons]
MARIA DUARTE goes down a bilingual rabbit hole with an impressive Jodie Foster
DAVID HARVIE recommends a selection of Harry Cleaver’s writing that documents working-class activism and offers a method, and a way of understanding and investigating the world
DAVID YEARSLEY is fascinated by the account of four composers who transformed their experiences of the second world war and the Holocaust into deeply moving works of art
PETER MASON thrills to the sound of south London-born Yussef Dayes, and the galaxy of musicians drawn into his orbit
From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
APRIL 29 was the 120th anniversary of the birth of Edward “Duke” Ellington, the greatest American orchestral innovator of the last century and commemorating his genius on solo piano at this gig is marvellous Antigua-rooted pianist, Pat Thomas.
For Thomas, Ellington is the epitome of jazz and all creative music and he himself has built a reputation for his brilliant free improvisation excursions with confrere Orphy Robinson.
Yet here he is both in the tradition yet simultaneously beyond it. He begins with Prelude to a Kiss and the hammer blows of his chords combine huge manual effort with gentle and serene melody.
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