STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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Improvisational greatness from a free spirit of the guitar
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
John Russell and Roger Turner
Birthdays
(Emanem)
John Russell
Analekta
(Emanem)
John Russell
Hyste
(psi)
FREE improvising guitarist John Russell taught himself the instrument at the age of 11 while listening to the blues and rock of John Mayall, Frank Zappa, Muddy Waters and King Crimson and the London Jazz Composers' Orchestra led by Barry Guy was also an influence.
He was a regular at John Stevens's Little Theatre Club where he met epochal saxophonist Evan Parker and free guitarist Derek Bailey, with whom he studied for a year, and all these experiences helped to form his music, forged too at free sessions at the Unity Theatre and the Red Rose club. There in the mid-’80s he formed the Mopomoso Club, a co-operative venture that brought committed free musicians together and enabled them to tour across Britain and Europe.
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