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Alan Wilkinson and the Akodo Quartet, Cafe Oto, London
Elemental: Alan Wilkinson
[Cafe Oto]
STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
VETERAN virtuoso of the baritone saxophone, Alan Wilkinson is a scintillating improvising free jazzer and at Cafe Oto he's joined by three young Norwegians in the Akodo Quartet — bassist Ola Hoyer, drummer Dag Erik Knedal Anderson and Kim Johanneson on guitar and banjo.
The elemental power of Wilkinson’s saxophone is like nothing else in European jazz.
His opening colloquy with Johanneson’s chinking guitar reveals the sheer potency of a sound which growls, snarls and wails at his top register and plunges down into the lower depths of his horn in an instant, making height and profundity all of one sonic place.
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