Reviews of A New Kind Of Wilderness, The Marching Band, Good One and Magic Farm by MARIA DUARTE, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA
Latest editorial
Gripping account of pianist Stan Tracey's long voyage of jazz discovery
SCOTT ALSWORTH foresees the coming of the smaller, leaner, and class conscious indie studio, with art as its guiding star
MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
The Godfather of British Jazz: The Life and Music of Stan Tracey
by Clark Tracey
(Equinox, £39.95)
IN HIS 80th year, Britain's greatest jazz pianist Stan Tracey described his life in music as “one long voyage of discovery” and this biography by his son Clark, who played regularly with his father as a drummer from 1978 to 2013, is a profoundly engaging account of that journey.
Tracey, born in South London, grew up “between Tooting and Brixton” and Clark relies on his father's diaries to describe his boyhood as an accordionist before becoming a pianist and his launch into professional music with Tony Hancock's comedy tours and as a member of the RAF Gang Show touring Palestine and Egypt.
His trips as pianist on the liner Queen Mary took him to New York where he found his heroes. “Monk and Ellington were the two piano players who really zapped me,” he wrote.
More from this author
CHRIS SEARLE wallows in an evening of high class improvised jazz, and recommends upcoming highlights in May
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to drummer Steve Noble
CHRIS SEARLE interviews saxophonist Chris Williams about the extraordinary electro-acoustic album LEDLEY - a bold fusion of Jazz, football, and community spirit
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Rwanda-born jazz vocalist INEZA
