Currently in its 10th season, the Acoustic Affair held its first show in February 2002 and has now played host to over 200 well selected artists in over 120 shows in venues throughout Glasgow and Scotland. These locations include the Tron, the Arches, St Andrews in the Square, ABC and Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall.
Calendar
A fortuitous meeting in North London brought together legendary guitar veteran John Etheridge and extravagantly talented singer Vimala Rowe, who have developed a highly personal repertoire from an eclectic mix of musics – original and traditional. Both performers have a protean range of influences. Etheridge has over the years worked in contexts from Classical, Jazz to Progressive Rock, whereas Rowe’s span seems almost instinctive – effortlessly absorbing and blending the worlds of all the great soul and jazz singers into a personal mix including Indian Classical, African Folk and Syriac Aramaic.
One of the defining features of the duo’s work is the commitment and passion of their delivery. Rowe is a fiery performer by any standards- yet the paring down to just two produces intimacy and drama alike. Explosive but chambered. The big effect and the delicate gesture. The pieces are carefully chosen to surprise, but above all to take the listener on an emotional journey through joy and pain, sombre or swinging. There’s dark and light. A real musical journey.
A unique pairing that satisfies on so many levels, their album ‘Out of the Sky’ was elected in the Top Ten critic’s choice of album of the year 2016 in both the Guardian and the Sunday Times the track ‘Detour Ahead’ in the Top Five in the Guardian.
7:15 pm doors, 7:30 pm show time
Over 14s, under 16s accompanied by an adult over 18
Festival website: www.jazzfest.co.uk
Scotland’s leading ‘Hot Club’ swing band joins forces with top Scottish saxophonist, Scottish Jazz Awards 2017 ‘Best Instrumentalist’, Konrad Wiszniewski and the award-winning Capella String Quartet to celebrate the vintage sound of the 1930s.
Led by virtuoso violinist, and Scottish Jazz Awards 2017 ‘Best Vocalist’, Seonaid Aitken, Glasgow-based Rose Room also features Scotland’s No.1 guitar maker Jimmy Moon on double bass with Danny Kyle Award-winning Swing Guitars’ Tam Gallagher and Tom Watson on rhythm and solo guitars respectively.
With the help of Wiszniewski’s “ravishingly beautiful tone” and the “gorgeous romantic accompaniment” of the Capella String Quartet, the result is a classy interpretation of Rose Room’s gypsy jazz repertoire fit for a 1930s dance hall.
7:15 pm doors, 7:30 pm show time
Over 14s, under 16s accompanied by an adult over 18
Artist website: http://roseroom.co.uk
Festival website: www.jazzfest.co.uk
Alabaster dePlume (Lost Map Records) + Art of Falling
Following 12 monthly development residency concerts and 3 viral video clips, this ruthlessly creative approach to experimental pop music delivers eastern-influenced anthems, under spoken elements that attempt to challenge and address divisive rhetoric recently prevalent in society. Ahead of an LP release on Lost Map produced by Danalogue (Comet is Coming) and Kristian Capitol K in early 2018, the show described in the Guardian as “a reminder of how vital and adventurous music can be” enjoys an emphasis on candid interaction, humility and warmth. Based in underground East London’s Total Refreshment Centre, saxophonist and spoken word artist Alabaster creates a new band each month in his development residency Peach. PRSF has funded his forthcoming 4th LP The Corner of a Sphere, following recent performances for BBC Radio 3, National Theatre and clubs festivals and theatres around UK. “Totally unique… Very, very brilliant indeed” – Max Reinhardt, BBC Radio 3
“One of the most thrilling performances I’ve seen this year; a reminder of how vital and adventurous music can be” – Laura Barton, The Guardian
“…Majesty” – Q Magazine
“Takes the biscuit” – DJ Magazine
“a torrent of words and ideas that never fail to inspire” – CLASH Music
“One of my definite favourite saxophone players from this country” – Shabaka Hutchings
“Frankly @a_deplume is outrageously talented and puts the rest of us to shame, this is just sublime, one of my favourite poets by a country mile” – WordLife Sheffield
KIKAZARU + MANU VAN KERSBERGEN
Kikazaru brings you thirty minutes of exploration, using free improvisation to move through original and found music, which could be jazz standards, old Senegalese folk tunes, ragas from Lucy’s time in Delhi or John Carpenter-style film music. Combining the cerebral with the physical, the intense with the sublime, the raw with the ridiculous, Kikazaru will fry their brains to blow your minds.
Emma Smith (double bass), Graeme Stephen (guitar+loops), River of Slime (Sampler+loops), Davide L Rinaldi (drums) and Lucy Forde (flute)
www.emmasmithbass.com/kikazaru
Manu van Kersbergen (Amsterdam, Holland) broke through as a word artist with his album DE VLOEK op de OVERLOED. With his roots in rhythm and poetry, he developed a great love for telling and transferring a story, in the broadest sense of the word.
“We are more than the matter that surrounds us.
And that is not a mystery, but a principal that shapes us.”
www.manu-script.com
UNA MCGLONE + JIM MCEWEN
Una MacGlone’s career has multiple strands. As a double-bassist in a variety of musical areas, she has collaborated with pop and jazz musicians such as David Byrne, Rab Noakes and Keith Tippett among others, and is also a regular addition to the bass sections of Scottish Opera, BBC SSO and RSNO. As an improvising musician, she is a founder member of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra (GIO) and works on various projects with international improvisers such as Renee Baker (Chicago, AACM) and Maggie Nicols (London F.I.G). Una is also a member of the inclusive contemporary music group Sonic Bothy, who recently won the Paritor Education award for New Music – which was part of the 2015 National Music Council Education awards, and experimental/improv/noise project Vincent alongside Tom Bancroft, Satoko Fuji and Graeme Stephen. Performing at Bitches Brew with pianist Jim McEwan, the duo work with sympathetic vibrations between their instruments and performance spaces. They prepare their instruments with metal, wood and found objects to make odd musical loops. They are drawn to emotional tunes and harmonies.
PEFKIN
Pefkin is the alter ego of Gayle Brogan, one half of Glaswegian vintage synth duo Electroscope and ex-proprietor of the Boa Melody Bar mail order. She has been recording as Pefkin since 1999 and released albums on Morc, Wild Silence, Reverb Worship, Pseudoarcana, etc. More recently she has been recording with the Kitchen Cynics’ Alan Davidson under the name Barrett’s Dottled Beauty, creating psych-folk hymnals inspired by a mutual love of folk songs and nature, and has been recording with United Bible Studies. On her own Gayle creates a dreamy rural psychedelia from looped vocals, zither / lyre, analogue synth and violin and has received comparisons to Coil, Popul Vuh and Nico. She has recently released a new album “Final Instar” inspired by moths on Siren Wire, an 8″ lathe cut on Sonido Polifonico and is working on several collaborative projects currently.
www.pefkin.bandcamp.com
AILIE ROBERTSON
Ailie Robertson from Edinburgh is widely regarded as one of Scotland’s leading young traditional musicians. A five-time National Mod Gold Medalist and a BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year finalist, Ailie also won first prize at the inaugural London Harp Competition, was judged best overall musician at the Edinburgh Competition Festival and won the St Albans New Roots award. Her debut solo album ‘First things first’ won the ‘Live Ireland’ award for ‘Best Instrumental Cut of the Year’. She has performed and taught all over the world, released 3 solo CDs and published 7 volumes of harp sheet music. “Innovative, assured and beautiful…her harp exerts an undeniable and inexorable tug at the heart strings” – Scotland on Sunday
www.ailierobertson.com
7:30 pm doors, 8:00 pm show time
Over 18s only
Festival website: www.jazzfest.co.uk
Glasgow Jazz Festival Presents: Mr Jukes plus support from Rebecca Vasmant (DJ set).
Mr Jukes is the new project from Jack Steadman (Bombay Bicycle Club). New album God First sees Steadman take on the roles of artist, composer, producer and sample-hound. Colloborators like BJ The Chicago Kid, Lalah Hathaway, De La Soul and Lianne La Havas contribute powerful vocals over Mr Jukes tantalising mix of jazz, soul and R&B. Featuring samples from sources as diverse as Argentinian jazz great Jorge Lopez Ruiz and famed Italian composer Alessandro Alessandroni as well as Mr Jukes’s own musical contributions, Steadman’s once again succeeded in reinventing himself.
7:30 pm doors, 8:00 pm show time
Over 14s, under 16s accompanied by an adult over 18
Artist website: www.jukesjukes.com
Nominated for Male Jazz Vocalist of the Year in the prestigious US Downbeat 82nd Annual Readers’ Poll 2017, “Best Jazz Vocalist” at the BBC Jazz Awards in 2007 and 2004, and the Jazz FM awards in 2013, Ian Shaw has recorded a number of highly acclaimed internationally released albums and is a popular performer both in the UK and the US. He has been cited, along with Mark Murphy and Kurt Elling, as one of the world’s finest male jazz vocalists. In 2015 Ian signed to Harmonia Mundi’s Jazz Village label and recorded his first album, the best-selling The Theory Of Joy for them, released in 2016 to great acclaim. Ian toured the album in Canada, the Far East, Australia and Europe in club dates and at festivals.
Shine Sister Shine (just released on double vinyl) is Shaw’s current studio album and is a celebration of the actions and art of extraordinary women – “an album crammed with sharp pain, deeply felt, then countered with soaring, resonant hope” (Stella Duffy).
Moved by recent world events – the election of a cartoon president whose life is more suited to the high-end romps of a glossy pin-up mag hero – and the subsequent rallying of millions of women, Shaw has penned new songs reflecting two years’ working alongside refugees (‘Keep Walking’ is a hymn to the resilience of an Eritrean mother, whose life was shredded by civil war and a world that looks the other way. ‘Carry On World’ stars Shaw’s sisters – all five million of them).
Shaw is known as one of the jazz world’s supreme interpreters of the popular song form – here showcasing dazzling new arrangements of works by Peggy Lee, Phoebe Snow, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, as well as friends and collaborators closer to home – Sarah Jane Morris, the genre-defying Gwyneth Herbert, Judith Owen Julie Matthews – and a stunning co-write with UK pop legend, Tanita Tikaram, on the title track.
7:00 pm doors, 7:30 pm show time
Over 18s only
Festival website: www.jazzfest.co.uk
Glasgow Jazz Festival Presents: The Georgie Fame Family Trio plus support from Luca Manning & Fergus McCreadie.
With his much loved blend of Jazz and Rhythm & Blues, Georgie Fame has consistently worked in the highest musical circles and has become a icon of the British music scene.
So far there have been more than twenty albums and fourteen hit singles, including the Number 1’s: Yeh Yeh, Get Away and The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde. Add to this a long list of collaborations with some of music’s most famous names, including Muddy Waters, Gene Vincent, Bill Wyman, Eric Clapton and Van Morrison, amongst many others, and in Georgie Fame you have bona fide music legend.
7:15 pm doors, 7:30 pm show time
Over 14s, under 16s accompanied by an adult over 18
Artist website: www.georgiefame.co.uk
Alexander Hawkins is widely recognised as one of the UK’s most innovative and imaginative pianists and composers. Alexander is self-taught with a great love and deep knowledge of the jazz tradition which he brings, along with classical references, to his compositions and improvisations.
Along with his solo performances, he works in a vast array of creative contexts including leading and composing for his Quartet and Ensemble; in duo with South African drum legend Louis Moholo-Moholo and in Moholo’s Blokes; along with his duos with Evan Parker, John Surman, and Sofia Jernberg, and in projects with contemporary leaders – Joe McPhee, Anthony Braxton, Marshall Allen and Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke.
7:30 pm doors, 8:00 pm show time
Over 14s, under 16s accompanied by an adult over 18
Festival website: www.jazzfest.co.uk
Ashley Henry is one of a new generation of musicians that have been raised with a wide range of influences. Born and raised in South London, Ashley Henry’s listening and visual styles, range from Sinead Harnett, Digital Underground, ZuZu, Margot Fonteyn, Era Istrefi, Freddie Mercury, and Dreezy – through to having fans that include the abstract artist Gareth Nyandoro, being an advocate for the legend pianist Abdullah Ibrahim…and being a big 6LACK fan.
Part of London’s Jazz Re:Freshed, Ashley Henry plays the piano with a beauty and sensitivity that usually comes from a lifetime immersed in jazz. In 2016 Ashley graduated from Royal Academy of Music, performed with Jason Marsalis and collaborated with legends Terence Blanchard and Jean Toussaint. He is the youngest ever to hit the bill for the International Piano Trio Festival performing with Robert Glasper, and top that year by achieving a childhood dream of performing in the final of the Unisia International Piano Competition in South Africa.
2017 saw Ashley Henry recording his second full studio sessions in London. Collaborating with Luke Flowers (Cinematic Orchestra), MC Mattic (Nowadays France & NY), the Legendary Jean Toussaint, Monte Booker (Soulection), Alicia Olatuja (President Obama Inaugurations – Unlimited Myles), Moses Boyd (Brownswood) and Anthony Joseph (Strut Records). Written, produced and performed by Ashley Henry + RE-Ensemble, with the schedule to include the entitled track Easter and the seminal cover of Pressure, written by late indie punk trio The Enemy (retitled Beautiful Pressure w/vocals).
At only 25 years, Ashley Henry was commissioned as guest resident Musical Director for both Jazz Café, London and Ronnie Scotts, London, was a FADER MAGAZINE 2017 Emerging Artist, was nominated for a Jazz FM Award as Breakthrough Artist of the Year and Live Experience of the Year, the latter for his performance at the London Southbank.
7:30 pm doors, 8:00 pm show time
Over 14s, under 16s accompanied by an adult over 18
Festival website: www.jazzfest.co.uk
Marina Records proudly presents one of its most unusual and best releases yet: The music of The Pearlfishers, one of Marina’s most beloved acts, gets the royal jazz treatment in exciting new arrangements by the Colin Steele Quartet. Continuing a great jazz tradition – like Miles Davis with “Porgy & Bess” (’58) and Chet Baker with “Plays Lerner & Loewe” (’59) – the entire album is dedicated to the work of one composer – David Scott of The Pearlfishers. Colin Steele from Edinburgh, one of UK’s leading jazz trumpeters, adds his very own sound and interpretations to Scott’s songs and transports them into a brand new musical territory.
Steele has a long association with The Pearlfishers since he appeared as a studio musician on many of their albums. Steele: “I’d played on many sessions with The Pearlfishers before, and have a similiar taste in music with David Scott, with our shared love of Burt Bacharach, Beatles and Beach Boys. I was impressed by the depth of the beautiful melodies and could immediately hear my own voice playing these melodies – specifically using the ‘Miles Davis sound’ of the Harmon mute.”
The results are simply gorgeous. The album kickstarts with the joyous blast of “The Bluebells” – a song that originally appeared on the Pearlfishers album “Up With The Larks”. Colin Steele makes it swing and rise just beautifully. His warm, melodic playing and tone is also a perfect match for the wonderful “Everything Works Out”, one of Scott’s most enduring songs. “The Vampires Of Camelon” rides on a great piano riff reminiscent of Vince Guaraldi – brilliantly played by Dave Milligan, Steele’s long-time collaborator, who also arranged the album. Quite fabulously so.
“Ice Race” – from the Pearlfishers’ seasonal album “A Sunflower At Christmas” – gets propelled to new heights by the powerhouse drumming of Alyn Cosker. It just grabs you and won’t let you go. “Gone In The Winter” is a superb showcase for the exceptional deep-toned, warm double-bass playing of Calum Gourlay. Just stunning.
The piano intro of “The Umbrellas Of Shibuya” quite fittingly recalls the stripped-down beauty of Ryuichi Sakamoto. And then Steele breezes in with the fantastic melody and his imaginative playing. The album comes to a perfect close with the blissful coda “Swan Dreams” (originally from “Sky Meadows”). Simply sublime.
“Diving For Pearls” was recorded in just one day – like many of the greatest jazz albums – at Scotland’s famous Castlesound studios (The Blue Nile, Orange Juice, R.E.M.). Masterfully engineered by Stuart Hamilton. You really get the “in-the-room-with-the-artist” feel. Dive, baby, dive!
7:30 pm doors, 8:00 pm show time
Over 14s, under 16s accompanied by an adult over 18
Festival website: www.jazzfest.co.uk