Jazz /
Michael Gibbs ★ Tanglewood 63
Talented jazz composer, conductor, arranger, trombonist and keyboardist Michael Gibbs’ two albums for Deram, dating from 1970 and 1971. Gibbs recorded with Graham Collier, Johnny Dankworth, Kenny Wheeler and in the late 60s, before starting his recording career. As a producer and arranger, Gibbs has worked with a who’s who of artists including Whitney Houston, Joni Mitchell, Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, Peter Gabriel and many more. Digitally remastered and slipcased. Extensive new notes by Cha…
Change Is
The Don Rendell - Ian Carr quintet, created in 1963, was,a small Brit jazz group that took the country by storm and was well received in Europe and in limited circles in the United States. The band developed a unique sound that came out of hard bop and moved through many different phases, developing a unique musical language before they reached the mountain top of creative expresión.
Tebugo
"This is special for me. Evan Parker and Paul Rogers have given their permission for this release. I asked Evan if he would write some notes but he wants me to do it – my memory of the gig. That was 33 years ago (1992), so I don’t remember much. It was at the old Vortex on Stoke Newington Church Street; I must have been sitting with Candy on a little table in front of the low stage. A Marantz cassette recorder in front of me and a cheap mic stand with a single stereo mic in front of that. The ma…
What Say We Play Today?
Limited edition album by Tony Coe’s Axel featuring Tony, Gordon Beck, Phil Lee, Chris Laurence and Bryan Spring. Recorded during the Camden Jazz Festival at the Shaw Theatre in Euston, London in 1977. Featuring wonderful compositions from Tony, Phil Lee and Gordon Beck, who contributed the brilliant title track. The single CD comes in a 4-panel digisleeve, with a 20 page booklet containing notes from Dave Gelly, John Wickes, Chris Laurence and Chris Searle.
In 1975, Tony Coe formed a co-operativ…
Home Thoughts
Home Thoughts is the late, luminous farewell from Michael Garrick, written for his Lyric Ensemble and recorded in 2011. Working with poetry by Shakespeare, Browning, Blake and others, he fashions 12 song-like pieces where jazz harmony, chamber textures and spoken or sung verse fuse into an intimate, autumnal meditation on memory, love and mortality.
Tone Poems
Tone Poems sees Michael Garrick orchestrating textures and images in a powerful display of big-band colour. Released in 2011 and performed by the Michael Garrick Jazz Orchestra, the suite of eight pieces draws on myth, landscape, and autobiography - each composition unfolding as a miniature drama of shifting harmony and luminous ensemble interplay.
Green and Pleasant Land
Green and Pleasant Land finds Michael Garrick turning the English landscape into chamber jazz, writing for a luminous string-based group with piano at its centre. Across live performances from the early 2000s, he folds folk melody, hymn fragments and knotty improv into quietly radical miniatures that make the countryside feel haunted, restless and very much alive.
The New Quartet
The New Quartet introduces Michael Garrick in close-up, stripped of choirs and orchestras and thrown into agile, conversational post-bop with Martin Hathaway, Paul Moylan and Alan Jackson. Across standards, Garrick originals and nods to Joe Harriott and Jaco Pastorius, the 2002 session turns lyricism into a pressure test, revealing how much drama four voices can conjure in a small room.
Down on Your Knees
On Down on Your Knees, Michael Garrick revisits his sacred-jazz obsessions through the language of a modern small big band, setting hymns, blues, and standards in luminous, late-20th-century colour. With vocalist Anita Wardell alongside Martin Shaw, Steve Waterman, Jim Tomlinson and others, the 1999 album feels like a devotional songbook rewritten for restless, metropolitan believers.
Lady of the Aurian Wood: A Magic Life of Duke
In Lady of the Aurian Wood: A Magic Life of Duke, Michael Garrick salutes Ellington not with imitation but with a gleaming fever-dream of big-band narrative. Writing for the Michael Garrick Jazz Orchestra with Norma Winstone in a central role, he turns characters, ghosts and side-stories from Duke’s orbit into a 12-part, 75-minute suite of blues, prayer and hall-of-mirrors swing.
Peter Pan Jazzdance Suite
Peter Pan Jazzdance Suite lets Michael Garrick turn J. M. Barrie’s myth into airborne big-band theatre. Written for the Michael Garrick Jazz Orchestra and premiered for his 70th birthday, this 2003 suite paints Peter, Wendy, the Darlings, Tink, Hook, and the Lost Boys in vividly dancing themes that swing, drift, and menace by turns.
Genius
Genius presents Joe Harriott in full, volatile clarity, stitching together live free-form recordings from 1961 with sharper-edged studio sides and collaborations. Across these eleven tracks, his alto saxophone burns through hard bop, standards, and abstraction alike, supported by Coleridge Goode, Phil Seamen, and pianist Michael Garrick, among others.
Gigs: Introducing Michael Garrick
Gigs: Introducing Michael Garrick catches Michael Garrick on the bandstand rather than in the chapel, a pianist still forming his voice through standards, ballads, and early originals. This live-feeling 2008 release frames him with a tight trio setting, revealing a restless, harmonically alert player already bending the jazz canon toward his own lyric intensity.
Yet Another Spring
On Yet Another Spring, Michael Garrick enlarges his sacred-jazz universe into a full-scale orchestral meditation on birth, loss, and renewal. Scored for the Michael Garrick Jazz Orchestra with recurring features for Norma Winstone, the 2006 suite moves from intimate prayer to blazing big-band catharsis, treating the life cycle as both liturgy and drama.
Inspirations
Inspirations finds Michael Garrick turning inward with his New Quartet, distilling a lifetime of big ideas into melodic, small-group conversation. Recorded in 2006, it honours John Coltrane’s legacy without mimicry, letting Garrick, Martin Hathaway, Paul Moylan, and Alan Jackson reimagine spiritual intensity as supple, lyrical post-bop.
Children of Time
On Children of Time, Michael Garrick stretches his sacred-jazz imagination into cosmic scale, writing for the Jazz Britannia Orchestra and reuniting with vocalist Norma Winstone to explore creation myths, Eucharistic ritual, and his own visionary texts. The result is a 2006 suite that feels like a liturgy drifting through deep space, turning theology into glowing, unsettled sound.
Jazz Praises at St. Paul's
With Jazz Praises at St. Paul's, Michael Garrick welds liturgical grandeur to jazz improvisation, conjuring an atmosphere as reverent as it is free. Featuring the Michael Garrick Sextet, John Marshall, and the St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir, this 2005 release radiates both spiritual inquiry and creative boldness, transcending boundary with every motif.
Big Band Harriott
Big Band Harriott finds Michael Garrick scaling Joe Harriott’s music up to a roaring jazz orchestra, preserving the original’s sharp lines and Caribbean-inflected bite while opening them into rich new voicings, long arcs of tension and release, and solos that underline just how modern this repertoire still feels.
Down Another Road
Down Another Road @ Stockholm Jazz Days '69 catches Graham Collier’s sextet in full flight, turning a cornerstone studio album into a raw, expansive live ritual where luminous themes, tough grooves and free-leaning episodes collide, sketching British jazz at the cusp of its most exploratory moment.
Seven for Lee / Green and Orange Night Park
On Seven for Lee / Green and Orange Night Park, Kevin Figes & You Are Here treat the 7-inch as a miniature universe, squaring up to Lee Konitz and Keith Tippett with wiry lyricism, nervy swing and a slightly spectral warmth that makes homage feel like the start of another story rather than the end of one.