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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Mabern's got the blues, marvellously
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
Harold Mabern
Right on Time and To Love and Be Loved
(Smoke)
HAROLD MABERN is part of that great tradition of pianists from the southern city US city of Memphis, which also birthed Phineas Newborn, James Williams and Donald Brown.
Mabern, born in 1936, grew up wanting to be a drummer and he tells how he used to beat on cans as a child. It was then that he heard a young girl playing the song I Stuck My Dollar in the Mud on the piano, which inspired him to teach himself the instrument and join his high school band. He met local jazz eminences like saxophonist George Coleman, trumpeter Louis Smith and the prodigious Newborn, which propelled him into the heart of the music.
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