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Music bridges troubled waters
CHRIS SEARLE reports on a festival where musicians from around the world defied dark times with a sense of musical unity

THE MENACE of the impending Trump presidency was reflected in the anxious soundscape created by many of the musicians at this year’s London Jazz Festival.

Tenor saxophonist Trish Clowes asked everyone at her free-stage Barbican performance to shake hands and hug each other in anti-Trump solidarity before she played her tune Blue Calm, while young pianist Elliot Galvin said it was “now very pertinent” to play Kurt Weill’s Mack the Knife, conjuring an aura of murderous dark forces at work as he did so.

And the diaphanous blues cadences of Are You Glad to Be in America? rang out from the slashing guitar of James Blood Ulmer at Rich Mix.

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