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GEOFF BOTTOMS relishes a profoundly human portrait of a family as it evolves across 55 years in Sheffield
‘Jazz has always been a music of resistance in the way it reacts to the turbulence of its times’
CHRIS SEARLE in conversation with jazz guitar maestro Rob Luft
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an excellently crafted new musical that explores the life and death of Ruth Ellis
PAUL DONOVAN is tickled by the excruciating take-downs of one of the funniest, wittiest, political writers around.
RON JACOBS points out, via a transcription of Kissinger’s secret recordings, that Trump could never have existed without Nixon and Kissinger
ELLIS RAE is persuaded that the advantages of the ‘talking cure’ are superior to the treatment of mental illness with drugs
JOHN GREEN, MICHAL BONCZA and BELLA KATZ review The Good Boy, Broken English, and Don't Be Prey
ROB LUFT is a brilliant young Sidcup-born jazz guitarist who proudly told me: “I share my birthday with Jimi Hendrix!” He began learning guitar at six and as a boy was immersed in an eclectic storm of music. “I loved the 1990s grunge rock bands like Nirvana, yet very early on I was playing the blues of Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker.”
His guitar teacher took him to hear his first jazz gig, with the Allan Holdsworth Trio: “I'll never forget hearing Holdsworth's virtuosity right up close at such a young age,” he remembered.
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