Jazz In Britain

04/01/2026

U-Begot from Evan Parker, Paul Rogers and Louis Moholo-Moholo being played in Rochester, NY this afternoon... opens hour three of Peter Badore's show:

WAYO is a free-form, low-power station in Rochester, NY providing diverse and idiosyncratic arts and cultural programming.

01/01/2026

Jazz in Britain friends in America should know that Dusty Groove in Chicago carry our catalog... and always write insightful reviews... here's what they say about our recent Tony Coe album:

Beautifully freewheeling work from reedman Tony Coe – a player who's not always captured in territory this great, even though his performances are always wonderful! The album's very different than most other Coe sessions of the 70s – filled with very long tracks that have a sweet electric vibe, thanks to superb work on Fender Rhodes from Gordon Beck – a pianist we always love in an acoustic mode, but who always grabs us even more when he goes electric – which he does here in a tremendous way! Beck's tones color in the record beautifully, and are balanced by sharper reed lines from Coe – who blows tenor, soprano, bass clarinet, and clarinet – in a group that also has guitar from Phil Lee, electric bass from Chris Laurence, and drums from Bryan Spring – all players who never go too far, or make the album an overdone fusion outing – maybe instead hanging back in the kind of territory that Stan Getz would explore with Chick Corea. Titles include "Your Dancing Toes", "Love Song", "Cela", and "What Say We Play Today"

30/12/2025

Review of SAROST's Aurora all the way from New Zealand...

"This is a release which would not sound out of place on Iapetus, Cuneiform, Discus or Moonjune... "

Sarost is a brand-new trio comprising Larry Stabbins (saxophones), Paul Rogers (double bass), and Mark Sanders (drums & percussion), but although this is a new band the three have been well reg…

27/12/2025

Cela from Tony Coe's What Say We Play Today featured on Different Noises on All About Jazz...

New Music From Politzer, Davis, West, Genovese & More article by Bob Osborne, published on December 25, 2025 at All About Jazz. Find more Radio & Podcasts articles

27/12/2025

Evan Parker's Tebugo was the centrepiece of Peter Badore's show last Sunday in Rochester, NY...

WAYO is a free-form, low-power station in Rochester, NY providing diverse and idiosyncratic arts and cultural programming.

23/12/2025

Here’s our annual Jazz In Britain Xmas quiz… well, this is the first year!

We sent the final manuscript of our next book to author Chris Searle today, for a final check over, so the quiz is based around that impending publication… ‘Global Groove: Words of a Jazz Cosmos’.

Here’s the cover which was designed by Jazz In Britain’s Pete Woodman, with Chris… photos of nine musicians featured in the book… can you name them all?

If you correctly identify them, your name will be put in the hat to be drawn in the New Year… and the lucky winner will receive a bunch of out-of-print Jazz In Britain CDs and books…

Competition closes 31st December…

22/12/2025

Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg's words on Tebugo...

Recorded in 1992 at the former Vortex , Stoke Newington Church Street, back when Paul Rogers was still playing his powerful four-string double bass (he's been playing the seven-string ALL with sympathetic strings for about twenty years now, a completely different instrument). Here we hear music more or less similar to that of the Parker Guy Lytton Trio: free jazz that is energetic, primal, yet subtle, complex, and refined. Paul Rogers had by then become THE bassist to watch in the UK, alongside Mark Sanders, Elton Dean, Paul Rutherford, Keith Tippett, Paul Dunmall, Howard Riley, Tony Levin, Louis Moholo , and others. His playing combines the power of a Mingus with the sophistication of the La Faro and Dave Holland school, with an ability to play free jazz with astonishing logic in pizzicato while retaining an indelible jazz atavism, not to mention his astounding bowing skills. Also, I saw and heard him abuse his double bass like no one before. He has lived in France for many years and can still be heard on several of Paul Dunmall's best albums of the last 20 years. His solo albums are incredible. What more can be said about Evan Parker, one of the most original free tenor saxophonists? His breathtaking technique and articulation are put at the service of exceptional musicality, with complex spirals and intertwined breaths brimming with sound effects and harmonics, from pianissimo to forte, all with masterful control of the sound. The aim in this trio is to balance the forces at play in an egalitarian spirit, giving each musician space to play without hogging the spotlight. And from this perspective, Louis MoholoHe understood everything. The one who recently left us (and this album pays tribute to him) inherited the initial sagacity of Sunny Murray from Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity (ESP 1002, the year-zero album of free jazz and the starting point of total free jazz), and the ethos of the late John Stevens. A polyrhythmic style with limited dynamic range and a multitude of micro-strikes delicately scattered across the surfaces of the drumheads and cymbals without overpowering the other musicians, moments of near silence, auditory stasis, and when the tension rises, an appropriate crescendo of percussive intensity. His virtuosity and precision are astounding and on par with Evan Parker and his favorite drummers, the two Pauls. At times, an elegant pulse reminds us that he hails from South Africa. As we know, there are prejudices and preconceived notions among the public, such as: "How can a South African musician, an anti-apartheid activist steeped in khwela, play with an avant-garde figure like Evan Parker, some of whose albums might be considered anti-jazz, Eurocentric, and avant-garde 'intellectual'?" The answer is quite simple: these musicians belong for life to the fraternal community of London-based jazz and improvisational musicians—a community characterized by attentive listening, camaraderie, and the fruitful exchange of daily experiences without elitism. Moreover, an improvised duo by Evan and Louis, made up of rhythmic sounds with short, percussive taps on the mouthpiece and precise strikes on the drumheads, is entirely unexpected and a testament to the two musicians' openness to one another. Free improvisation is fueled by whatever one chooses to include and does not adhere to established guidelines or sterile, "non-idiomatic" or post-academic theories. The three pieces in this memorable concert total 28:42, 14:50, and 36:06 and bear titles—puns that Evan Parker is fond of.

22/12/2025

Paul Dunmall - news and stuff featured on Canadian Community Radio... including a track from our Mujician album...

Featured Mujician, Paul Dunmall, Paul Rogers and Tony Levin, Paul Dunmall, Keith Tippett.

21/12/2025

Over the past decade, Jazz in Britain has built a reputation not through scale or spectacle, but through a steady, almost forensic commitment to its archive. Much of the label’s work begins with cassette and reel-to-reel recordings that have surfaced from musicians’ homes or family collections — tapes that were never intended for release, and in many cases barely revisited. From hundreds of such finds, only a small number are chosen, and only where artistic value and consent are clear. Nothing appears without approval; nothing is issued for the sake of filling gaps. Tebugo, a previously unreleased 1992 recording by Evan Parker, Paul Rogers and Louis Moholo, fits squarely within this approach. It is not an act of recovery for its own sake, but the release of music that still insists on being heard.

Read Steve Williams' complete review of Tebugo at UK Vibe here:

Over the past decade, Jazz in Britain has built a reputation not through scale or spectacle, but through a steady, almost forensic commitment to its archive. Much of the label’s work begins with cassette and reel-to-reel recordings that have surfaced from musicians’ homes or family collections ....

19/12/2025

"On this album, Coe’s playing rests on an unusually integrated conception of composition and improvisation..." from Jack Kenny's review of our new Tony Coe album, 'Axel: What Say We Play Today?, on the Jazz Views site today.

I urge you to read Jack's full piece as I'm finding it's helping me (John Thurlow who 'discovered' and produced this album!) understand and appreciate the music better, and more deeply, than I already (probably pretty superficially) did. I knew I really liked it but didn't know why!

And to respond to Jack's urging... yes, we have another Tony Coe album in the pipeline for later next year.

And the Axel album was originally planned as a double album with more live performances from Ronnie's and elsewhere (with Bob Cornford rather than Gordon Beck) but after much agonising we dropped the second disc as the audio quality wasn't quite up to scratch.

Anyway, read Jack's full review here:

Quote The music is rather like tightly structured avant-garde embroidery, requiring concentration to fully appreciate the skeins of ideas. Jazz in Britain JIB-68-S-CD & JIB-68-S-DL Tony Coe (Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Soprano and Tenor Saxophone); Gordon Beck (Piano); Chris Laurence (Bass); Phil Lee (...

18/12/2025

Released today… a month ahead of the planned date!

All UK pre-orders have already been posted and all international ones will be on their way by the weekend…

… Tebugo by Evan Parker, Paul Rogers and Louis Moholo

17/12/2025

Chris Searle's review in the Morning Star of the Mujician album in his 'Four Best Jazz Album' list to close out 2025:

MANY jazz listeners have affirmed, that in the long wake of the John Coltrane Quartet, the foursome that has since most touched their brilliance is the English quartet, Mujician. Composed of the Bristolian pianist Keith Tippett, the south London tenor and soprano saxophonist Paul Dunmall, Luton-born seven-string bassist Paul Rogers and the Shropshire drummer, Tony Levin.

Between 1990 and 2005 they waxed six memorable albums on the US Cuneiform label, but now a triple CD has been created by Jazz in Britain, recorded from concerts in Cheltenham (1993), Vienna (2003) and Birmingham (2010). It is a beautiful sonic triptych called Mujician in Concerts, with the four members playing at their unified peak.

Sometimes haunting and hymnal as if coming from ancestral spirits — as in the opening message of Dunmall and Tippett in Cheltenham, othertimes rhapsodic and joyous: “We never spoke about the music beforehand,” declared Dunmall, “we just walked on stage and trusted in the music and each other.”

Rogers is a virtuoso bassist like no other, playing an instrument like no other, and Levin’s sense of time and moment is deeply empathetic, knowing instinctively the musical minds of his quartet-mates. Tippett and Levin are gone, but thanks to devoted and skilled travelling recordists, Andy Isham and Steve Trent, these long and precious musical instants are still with us, throbbing with life and artistry.